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Forging a
Sustainable
Path
student takes
interdisciplinary route
The Lebanese
Legacy in
North Carolina
Giving Voice
to Victims
for alumni & f Accccoladeriends of CHsASS
ACC Road Trip
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CHASS Accolades 2012
But those who were deaf or hard of hearing had to rely on
the skills of an American Sign Language (asl) interpreter.
As President Obama spoke from behind the podium about
the American Jobs Act, a man in black stood behind
him, relaying his message to those who could not hear it
for themselves. That man was none other than chass Dean
Jeff Braden.
Typically, licensed asl interpreters serve at large public
events. However, in situations such as an unexpected visit
from the president of the United States, some flexibility is
required. University officials contacted two licensed asl
interpreters and asked them to serve during the president’s
speech, but there wasn’t enough time to get all the
information required to meet the White House’s stringent
security-clearance standards for both interpreters. To
ensure that every attendee received the president’s mes-sage,
the university turned to Braden, who gladly accepted
the assignment. He was joined by asl interpreter Grace
Bullen Sved.
As a former certified asl interpreter, Braden has a long
history with the language. During his senior year of high
school, his mother — a social worker — placed a deaf child
with special needs in a neighbor’s home. She asked Braden
to help the family with child care after school. He enjoyed
the task so much that he continued sign language studies
in college.
As an undergraduate at Beloit College, Braden spent a year
working in the deaf-blind unit at the Perkins School for the
Blind, gaining hands-on experience in sign language.
Braden spent his junior year at Gallaudet University, the
world’s only university specifically designed to meet the
needs of people who are deaf and hearing-impaired. He
was so confident in his asl skills that when he returned to
Beloit as a senior, he talked his way into a job teaching asl
to his peers.
Braden’s signing skills have given him access to a number of
valuable opportunities, such as the year he spent teaching
sign language to chimpanzees at the University of Nevada,
Reno, where he worked alongside renowned psychologists
and chimpanzee researchers Trixie and Allen Gardner.
Braden’s gig for President Obama was not his first experience
with interpreting for celebrities. He interpreted for Jackson
Browne, Joni Mitchell and others at the May 1979 No
Nukes rally in Washington, d.c., that drew 65,000 activists
in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island incident.
Braden is grateful for the broadened perspective he has
gained through his experiences with sign language. “It
certainly expands your sense of diversity,” he says. “Deafness
is another culture. Sign language is another language. And
at Gallaudet, I had the experience of being a minority, which
definitely will change your outlook on life. It gave me a deep
appreciation for what it means to be human.”
President Barack Obama received an
enthusiastic welcome from NC State last
fall when he spoke at Reynolds Coliseum to
rally support for his economic policies. Most
people listened carefully to his every word. Seeing
Mesage
the
— Jen Jernigan, CHASS communication intern
Dean Jeff Braden signed
for President Obama
on campus.
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CHASS alum and Emmy Award-winning producer
and director Neal Hutcheson has spent the last
10 years documenting cultural change in North
Carolina, from deep Appalachia to the farthest
reaches of the Outer Banks.
Turning his lens down east, Hutcheson has produced Atlantic
(2012), a documentary that depicts the challenges facing families
who have lived and worked for generations along North Carolina’s
Core Sound. In a string of small fishing villages, residents have
adapted to the harsh environment, unique ecosystem, and ever-changing
topography that define the region. Now residents are
seeing their rich traditions eroded by water pollution, development
and relocated outsiders. What happens when ancestral attitudes of
interdependence between community and ecology are eroded by a
rising tide of free-market forces? Visit ncsu.edu/linguistics/ncllp/
for details about the North Carolina Language and Life Project and
the documentaries produced through the sociolinguistics program,
where Hutcheson is a staff member.
She says her instructors helped students learn as
much as they could and pushed them to succeed.
Donnelly hit the interview circuit with con-fidence,
a solid portfolio, a website and a dvd of
her work. Less than a month after she graduated,
she was offered two jobs. She took a position
as a digital journalist/reporter with nbc affiliate
wsls 10 in Roanoke, Va., where she continues to
work today. Donnelly’s experience bears out the
Wall Street Journal’s report (September 2010)
that NC State scored among the top 20
universities with job recruiters looking to hire the
best-trained and best-prepared graduates. Read
more about Donnelly and other chass alumni at
chass.ncsu.edu.
By the time Morgan Donnelly (Commu-nication
and Political Science ’10)
graduated, she had completed three
internships in her area of focus, she
had studied abroad and she had
conducted research.
Prepared
to Succeed
Graduating
Atlantic
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CHASS Accolades 2012
Students and others who passed through
Caldwell Lounge during the National Day
on Writing were invited to learn about —
and play with — new ways of sharing the
written and spoken word.
As the afternoon progressed, the hallways became covered
with sticky notes like those posted on SecretsWall.com.
“I’m afraid no one cares” appeared on one note. “I do” was
later scrawled on a note nearby. A scar journal allowed
writers to share stories of their scars, physical or otherwise.
Others interacted with a Kinect-style poetry site, seeing
huge projected images of themselves covered in poetry.
“Self-expression is alive and well,” says Casie Fedukovich,
assistant professor of English. “We wanted to share some
of the many possibilities for putting thoughts out into
the world.” wall
handwriting’s
on the
The
Scientific American highlighted forensic
anthropologist Ann Ross in several columns
about her work in tackling complicated murder
cases, in addressing risk factors for genocide
and in developing the new 3-D software that’s
helping scientists identify the gender and
ancestral origins of human remains with greater
speed and precision.
The Atlantic Monthly technology blog featured
English professor John Wall’s “Virtual Paul’s
Church” project. Wall is working to recreate
the spatial and acoustic dynamics of a sermon
John Donne preached in St. Paul’s Square in
17th-century London. As the blog Inside Higher
Education described it, Wall wants to “enable
make
headlines
We
Visit chass.ncsu.edu to read about these
and other faculty in the news.
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> chass.ncsu.edu
learners to experience historical events or places
instead of reading off a page.” Learn more about
John Wall’s project at chass.ncsu.edu.
During this election season, our political
scientists are called upon regularly for their
insights and expertise. Andy Taylor and Steven
Greene are quoted in the Wall Street Journal,
Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
and other national media outlets on topics
including the governor’s race, taxes, the
Republican presidential primaries and the key
battleground state of North Carolina.
When Piedmont Laureate Scott Huler was writing
a blog post for Scientific American about the
Dan Neil (MA, English ’86), a Pulitzer Prize
winner who writes an automotive column for
the Wall Street Journal, appears prominently
in the recent documentary Revenge of the
Electric Car.
The film follows four entrepreneurs as they fight to bring
the electric car back to the world market during a global
recession. Neil returned to campus to discuss the film and
the future of the electric car. See the interview we conducted
with Neil in the alumni section of chass.ncsu.edu by clicking
on the Alumni Profile Videos tag.
electric
car
Revenge
of the
Penn State child abuse scandal, he called on psychologist and CHASS
Dean Jeff Braden for his expertise in human nature.
Bloomberg Businessweek asked historian Blair Kelley to weigh in on the
widening income gap within the black community.
USA Today ran articles about how to avoid scams targeting the elderly.
The articles featured Karen Bullock, Monica Leach and Jodi Hall from
our Department of Social Work.
CHASS faculty frequently appear on WUNC radio’s The State of Things
to discuss everything from politics to Kafka, films and historic events.
The Atlantic highlighted sociologist and occupational-injury expert
Michael Schulman’s research about the lack of parental awareness
regarding the hazards their teens are facing in the workplace.
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CHASS Accolades 2012
Dean Jeff Braden gives a flip about the staff in
the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Actually, make that dozens of flips. With Mr. Wuf looking on
approvingly, the dean and his fellow administrators hosted a
picnic to honor and thank the 135 staff in the college for all
their hard work and dedication. “We have not been able to give
raises for the past several years,” the dean said as he flipped
burgers and hot dogs. “And we have asked staff members to take
on more and more work. We wanted to celebrate our staff and
let them know we value what they bring to the college each and
every day.” Lucky staff members also received items donated by
businesses along Hillsborough Street and beyond.
Accolades
2012 Edition
CHASS Advisory Board
President
Emily Barbour
Barry Beith
Erica Boisvert
Steve Bullard
Lee Garrett
Terrence Holt
Bryan Hum
David Jolley
Maria Kingery
NC State Foundation Board Liaison
Kathy Council
Accolades is published by the NC State University
College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Dean
Jeffery P. Braden
Editor, CHASS Director of Communication
Lauren Kirkpatrick
Contributing Writers
Caroline Barnhill
Christa Gala
Jen Jernigan
Lauren Kirkpatrick
Ken Otterbourg
Jimmy Ryals
Matt Shipman
Diana Smith
Design and Photography
NC State University Communication Services
Jennifer Martineau
Charlie Perusse
Harold Pettigrew
Carol Rahmani
Brooks Raiford
Brad Remmey
Bing Sizemore
Ken Wooten
NC State University is dedicated to equality of opportunity.
The University does not condone discrimination against
students, employees, or applicants in any form. NC State
commits itself to positive action to secure equal opportunity
regardless of race, color, creed, national origin, religion,
sex, age, or disability. In addition, NC State welcomes all
persons without regard to sexual orientation. 32,000 copies
of this public document were printed at a cost of
50¢ per copy.
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Head for the Hill
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transformation
NC State marks its 125th anniversary during 2012–2013. As we honor our traditions
and all those who have gone before to help create such a strong and vital university,
we are also highlighting alumni, students, faculty and others who have been catalysts
for transformation.
As we celebrate all we have been and plan for the challenges that lie ahead, we can take
great satisfaction in the spirit of transformation that continues to shape our priorities.
Be proud, reader. Be very proud.
stories OF
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Kristin Replogle is transforming students’
lives. Through her benevolence, they can
participate in unpaid internships with
nonprofits far and wide.
ACC Road Trip
10
Fostering Stability for Children 21
The Lebanese Legacy in North Carolina 12
Helping Students and Soldiers Talk the Talk 22
Alums Recognized
for Service
26
Soldier Turns
Oxford Scholar
24
Giving Voice
to Victims
16
14
Distinguished alumna Nora Shepard is a
teacher and poet. Through her tenacious
support of the creative writing program
at NC State, she is helping shape the
Triangle region into an arts mecca that
celebrates the literary arts.
8
Ariel Fugate incorporated sociology,
agriculture and agroecology into her
self-designed course of study. Her
quest and her passion? To understand
and share environmentally sustainable
practices related to the food we eat.
17
Lori Foster Thompson is helping lead
global development in the emerging field
of Humanitarian Work Psychology.
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CHASS Accolades 2012
path
For some students, college is a fairly
straightforward path: Choose a major
you enjoy, take the required courses and
eventually graduate. For others, such as
Ariel Fugate, the road is full of twists
and turns. Fugate, a Caldwell Fellow,
forged a path that took her from zoology
through wildlife and fisheries and
agriculture, into a close examination
of sociology and finally to a major
she designed herself in the college’s
interdisciplinary studies program.
Fugate arrived on campus from Lexington, Ky., as a
zoology major. She was an aspiring veterinarian. “I
was pretty narrow-minded at that point, focused on
a career I knew something about,” she recalls. “But
then I started looking into how wildlife and humans
are affected by agriculture.”
Led by her curiosity, Fugate signed up for a class
in wildlife management. That course opened her
eyes to the adverse effects that some farming
practices can have on wildlife habitat and water
quality. As she studied conservation practices, Fugate
became interested in agroecology, the study of ecology
on farms.
She was also intrigued by societal issues related to food
and sustainability. The field of sociology beckoned.
“I wanted to know more about the social aspect of
eating and how that affects human health,” she says.
“I also wanted to see how our eating habits impact
the environment.”
As Fugate became more informed, she grew increasingly concerned
about the public’s lack of general awareness about these issues.
“I don’t think many of us make a connection between our per-sonal
eating habits and the toll those habits take on us, on the
community and on the earth,” she says. “I wanted to find some
ways to build awareness and to encourage people to develop eating
habits that were healthier and that supported the environment.”
Fugate started with a population with whom she could readily
identify: students. And she chose a venue where they consumed
many of their daily meals: the campus dining halls. She conducted
research on NC State University’s food systems, examining what
was served in the dining halls, asking how the university decided
what to serve and learning where that food came from.
She is proud to report that the university is moving toward a goal
of ensuring that at least 10 percent of the food it serves is locally
sourced by the end of 2012.
She is also encouraged by the university’s response to some of her
research findings. While she was an intern with the university’s
Office of Waste Reduction and Recycling, she conducted a waste
audit of one of the dining hall’s dumpsters. “We found that 70
percent of what was in the dumpster was compostable,” she says.
“Based on our findings, the dining halls across campus began
composting. I like to think my research helped contribute to this
tipping point by spreading more awareness.”
a sustainable Forg ing
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Fugate says her self-designed interdisciplinary major has been
the perfect way to tie together her interests in agriculture,
sustainability and sociology. “Food touches many areas, so
it’s hard to limit it to just science or just sociology,” she says.
“The interdisciplinary studies option gives me the ability to
explore both the scientific and social aspects of food.”
This semester, for example, Fugate is conducting research in
a nearby county about food environments. “We are looking
at such factors as where supermarkets are located in relation
to neighborhoods and to the residents’ income levels,” she
says. “My major lets me apply what I’m learning to the real
world. I have become much more focused on how we can
make a difference in communities at large.”
Fugate’s efforts won’t end when she graduates this spring.
Nor will her interdisciplinary orientation. “I intend to keep
learning about food insecurity and sustainability,” she says.
“And I would like to keep working with interdisciplinary
topics, whether it’s through education or a communications
position in which I could raise awareness about food issues.”
— Jen Jernigan, CHASS communication intern
Ariel Fugate (Interdisciplinary
Studies ‘12) helped start the
Campus Farmers Market.
Outside the dining halls, Fugate was inspired to help provide
fresh, local produce to students and others on campus. Along
with fellow student Eric Ballard (’09), she co-founded the
Campus Farmers Market in 2009 to draw attention to and
build support for sustainable food systems.
Farmers and other vendors set up shop on the brickyard
every Wednesday during the growing season to sell their
produce, meats and cheeses, body lotion and other crafts —
all of which are produced in North Carolina. The market is
distinguished by its focus on education. “We want customers
to find high-quality affordable products, and we want to
increase their awareness about how important it is to support
the local economy,” Fugate says.
Beyond campus, Fugate shared her passion for sustainable
practices by co-teaching a “Cooking Matters” course for
children at the Boys Club of Raleigh through the nonprofit
Inter-Faith Food Shuttle. The course is part of a national
curriculum on healthy eating called “Share Our Strength.”
Fugate and another Caldwell Fellow were responsible for
incorporating a gardening component into the curriculum
to give the young boys a feel for food sustainability, which
is something she says they genuinely appreciated. “We
used something called vermicompost,” she explains. “It’s
essentially the process of breaking food waste down through
the addition of worms. The boys loved that!”
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CHASS Accolades 2012
Kane isn’t afraid to get down and dirty, and his producers
don’t hesitate to put him in wacky situations. He has painted
the field at NC State and marched with the University of
Virginia band at halftime. This year, he covered every inch
of exposed skin in gold glitter to cheer alongside the iconic
Florida State fans known as the Glitter Guys.
“For three weeks it looked like I had blond highlights in my
hair from all the gold,” says Kane, who has earned 11 Emmys
during his career, including the 2011 Southeast regional
Emmy Award for outstanding achievement in on-air sports
reporting. “To this day, I’ll reach into my pocket and a little
speck of glitter will fall out. But it’s great to experience the
energy and atmosphere at these schools.”
Kane, a former NC State basketball player who earned his
degree in communication, has been immersed in the world of
sports broadcasting since graduation. An unpaid internship
at Turner Sports in Atlanta evolved into a 14-year career
providing on-air promotions and creative services for Fox
Sports South. He’s emceed a steady stream of acc gigs and
even developed his own video production company, pack 30
Productions llc.
In recent months, Kane landed an acting job playing a
reporter for an upcoming film starring Denzel Washington
and John Goodman. It’s directed by Robert Zemeckis, who
also directed the Oscar-winning films Back to the Future
and Forrest Gump.
Kane said his experience in athletics at NC State fueled his
drive to develop a career in on-air sports. Before walking on
with the basketball team in the 1992–1993 season, he served
as a manager under the late Jim Valvano and later under Les
Robinson. “Coach Valvano always used to say that all you
can do is to put yourself in a position to win,” Kane says.
“I’ve applied that in the rest of my life. If I want something,
I do everything I can to put myself in that position so that
at the end of the day, if I don’t succeed, at least I know I had
a chance.”
— Diana Smith
ACC Tommy Kane (Comm ’93) is living every ACC
fan’s dream. He doesn’t spend his autumns
sitting in front of a TV watching football.
Instead, Kane travels to a different ACC game
every week to report on each school’s game-day
traditions for his award-winning show,
ACC Road Trip, produced by Raycom Sports.
Road Trip
Reprinted from the Winter 2012 issue of NC State magazine,
a benefit of membership in the NC State Alumni Association.
Tommy Kane (Comm ’93) included
an interview with Vice Chancellor
Tom Stafford at the Belltower
during filming for ACC Road Trip.
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“We talk about communication industries — plural — when we refer to
the world these students will be entering,” Alchediak says. “There are so
many directions they can move in when they graduate, from broadcast
work to the film business, public relations, advertising, you name it.
There’s a huge corporate and industrial market that needs skilled and
savvy professionals to help with multimedia design, to give them a strong
Web presence, to create all kinds of promotional campaigns.”
Alchediak’s students had lots of questions for Kane, including these:
What is your involvement behind the scenes in
ACC Road Trip?
My producer at Raycom Sports and I work together on all the
setup and preproduction aspects of the show. In this digital
world, you have to be prepared to do it all — to write, produce
and edit. And you have to market yourself.
Check out the ACC Road Trip episode
highlighting NC State’s homecoming
game at theacc.com/roadtrip.
What do you do in the off-season?
I hustle. I’m involved with a lot of other projects, including
corporate and business work. I just helped a hospital put
together a promotional campaign. There’s lots of room to
help people get their message out through video production.
I’m also working on a pilot show about what athletes do off
the field. And this opportunity to work on a movie? Wow. I
also coach high school basketball.
How do you like owning your own business?
It’s exhilarating. It’s also hard work. I’m taking calls at all
hours for ACC Road Trip, managing lots of the details of the
episode I’m working on plus the next one coming up. But I
love acc football and basketball. So it’s a great life.
When Tommy Kane recently visited campus to film an
episode of ACC Road Trip, he spoke to students in Jim
Alchediak’s digital video production class (COM 357).
from a pro
Kane offered this advice to students
who want to break into the business:
Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there.
Be confident when you’re creative.
Don’t just push the buttons. Think outside the box.
Don’t necessarily do what you did last time.
Mix it up.
Keep growing. Keep pushing yourself.
Stay flexible.
Manage your clients’ expectations.
Cultivate your relationships.
Say “I tried,” even if you fall on your face.
Always, always put yourself in a position to win.
Words of wisdom
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CHASS Accolades 2012
Khayrallah, a pharmaceutical executive, came to
the United States from Lebanon in 1983 with his
wife, Vera. Committed to preserving the area’s
Lebanese culture and heritage, he wanted to find a
way to capture the history of his people and share
it with others. When Khayrallah was introduced to
Akram Khater, professor of Middle Eastern history at
NC State, he shared his ideas about educating North
Carolinians about Lebanese-Americans.
With the help of Khayrallah’s generous gift, the
Khayrallah Program for Lebanese-American Studies
launched in fall 2010 to research, document, preserve
and publicize the story of Lebanese-Americans in
North Carolina and to educate the public on their
contributions to the state. As part of the project, a
team at NC State is creating these educational tools:
a documentary on the history of the community
that will air on UNC-TV;
a traveling museum exhibit that will launch at
NC State’s D.H. Hill Library in 2013;
a resource book and lesson plans for K-12
educators to teach the history of Lebanese-
Americans in our state; and
an online archive housing the personal stories,
letters, photos, home movies and newspaper
clippings of the state’s Lebanese-Americans.
“The story of Lebanese-Americans, like many
immigrants, is one of hard work that led to success
for themselves and their families and innumerable
economic and cultural contributions to North
Carolina,” Khater explains. “Today, there are about
16,000 first-, second- or third-generation immigrants
in our state, largely concentrated in the Triangle and
Charlotte. Early immigrants were more concentrated
Moise Khayrallah was troubled. In the wake
of the September 11 tragedy, the image
many Americans had of Arabs — including
his community, the Lebanese — was one
of conflict, violence and terrorism. After
more than 120 years of being an integral
part of the history and life of North
Carolina, seemingly overnight Lebanese-
Americans had become outsiders again.
Legacy IN North
Carolina
Lebanese The
Watch the trailer for the documentary,
Cedars in the Pines: The Lebanese In North Carolina,
at faculty.chass.ncsu.edu/akhater/lac.
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> chass.ncsu.edu
in eastern North Carolina — along what is now the
I-95 corridor — as they made their way from Ellis Island
down south.”
The first wave of immigrants, who came to North Carolina
between the 1880s and the 1920s, settled in such towns as
New Bern, Goldsboro, Wilson and Wilmington — right
off the train tracks throughout the state. Nearly all of
them “peddled” to earn a living, carrying suitcases filled
with knickknacks like lace, buttons, needles and napkins —
items one would find in a city store but that weren’t easily
accessible to people living in small towns and on isolated
farms across the state.
“They became salesmen offering products and services that
small towns and farmers didn’t have, but also a real link to
the community, bringing news and gossip from the larger
cities,” Khater says. “They worked very hard to be a part
of the local communities — joining Boy Scouts, sports
teams, community groups and more — and have continued
to integrate themselves into the community to this day,
enriching it with festivals, celebrations, restaurants, culture
and religions, their talents and entrepreneurial spirit.”
Khater and a team of public history graduate students are
working to interview immigrants and collect and digitize
maps, images, newspaper clippings and more to help tell the
story of a group of people that many feel have long been
invisible to the great majority of North Carolinians.
“We started capturing the voices of this community through
oral histories, in part because there came a point when we
exhausted the resources of libraries, historical societies and
archives,” explains Caroline Muglia, a graduate student
working on the project. “The truth is that Lebanese families
in North Carolina have collected the richest history of the
community to date. They lived the history.”
Muglia says that returning the project to the community
“has been the goal all along. We are building a platform for
the narratives of these people to continue to evolve and serve
as an educational tool in the process.”
Akram Khater agrees, and he emphasizes his gratitude
for Moise Khayrallah’s generosity. “Without his foresight
and philanthropy, we would not have been able to take
on the project,” Khater says. “Much of this oral history,
these important stories, might have been lost — and with
them, we would have lost an important part of North
Carolina’s history.”
— Caroline Barnhill
For more information about the project, visit
lac.chass.ncsu.edu.
Lebanese-Americans from across North
Carolina have shared family photos, letters
and documents to help tell their story.
14
CHASS Accolades 2012
advocate
teacher,
poet, Celebrated alum
Museum of Art’s docent organization, helping to launch the
community arts school Arts Together and volunteering in
the preservation of historic homes.
“I always found NC State to be such a warm and welcoming
place,” she recalls. “When my husband and I were building
our home outside Edenton, we spent a lot of time at the
College of Design’s library looking into architecture. And
then when we had school-aged daughters, we’d take them to
D.H. Hill Library for research and studying. We loved being
on campus and using the resources available here.”
But Shepard’s involvement with the creative writing program
came about a bit more serendipitously.
“A friend had given me a brochure for a summer writing
program at NC State in 2001,” she says. “At the time,
there was not a master of fine arts program, but there were
lots of wonderful creative writing people in the college. It
wasn’t even in my mind to get a degree. I just wanted to be
a better writer.”
Shepard signed up for a writing program workshop that
NC State held in conjunction with the North Carolina
Writers’ Network. Her teacher was poet Betty Adcock.
Shepard followed Adcock to Meredith College for additional
classes. “At some point, Betty told me that this poet named
John Balaban — who was a two-time National Book Award
nominee — was going to be directing a new creative writing
program at NC State,” Shepard remembers. “Betty asked
me to take a class with him, so I did. I felt very brave, taking
that class at my age, but it was wonderful. I loved being
with the students. I loved their hearts and their minds. And
along with Betty, John Balaban became my mentor.”
While Shepard was taking one course every semester as a
continuing education student, the college was launching the
mfa program. “I ended up having enough credits that if I
“My father became flustered when transporting my mother
to the hospital, and he drove to a building on Hillsborough
Street. There he discovered his mistake and arrived at Rex
Hospital on the corner of St. Mary’s and Wade Avenue with
just a bit of time to spare,” Shepard says with a smile.
Shepard, a poet and alumna of the college’s Master of Fine
Arts in Creative Writing program, was recently honored at
the NC State Alumni Association’s eighth annual Evening of
Stars gala as the 2011 chass Distinguished Alumna.
“Nora has given a good bit of her generous life to the arts, not
only as a remarkable poet and painter but also as a promoter
of the arts in our lives in the Triangle,” says John Balaban,
director of NC State’s creative writing program and the
university’s poet-in-residence.
After nearly being born on campus, Shepard’s involvement
with NC State resumed in the early 1970s, after she gra-duated
from Hollins University in Virginia with a double-major
b.a. in English and American literature and creative
writing (poetry). She occasionally enrolled in a writing or
painting class at NC State while she was also working for
the North Carolina Museum of Art. For most of the 1980s
and 1990s, Shepard spent her time advancing the arts in
the Triangle area — serving as the founding president of the
The way she tells it, Nora Hutton Shepard
was practically born at NC State. Literally.
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> chass.ncsu.edu
took a few more general courses and put together a thesis, I
could get my mfa degree,” she says.
Shepard graduated with her mfa in 2005. Today she teaches
a poetry course in the college each semester. “I wish I could
teach more than that, but I’m swimming for my life every
semester trying to find things that speak to my students,”
Shepard explains. “I can’t prepare for my class until I get
to know my students and we start building a respectful
community. So it’s different every semester. I want to reach
each student individually. I go to bed thinking about them,
and I wake up thinking about them.”
Shepard’s commitment to — and love for — the college’s
creative writing program are contagious. “For the last
four or five years, I’ve worked behind the scenes to spread
the word that this top-notch mfa program is not down
the road at Duke or UNC-Chapel Hill. It is right here at
NC State. We’re the only ones with this degree. The
capital city of Raleigh is full of world-class ballet, art
museums, symphonies and more — but most people don’t
know about the rich literary community that NC State has
helped to build.”
Read more about our celebrated alumni
at chass.ncsu.edu.
As for a fine arts program being located at a university
primarily known as a science and technology powerhouse,
Shepard says that while no one will argue the strength of
NC State’s technical prowess, “the humanities are the
heartbeat that students crave. We’re about educating
an entire person. If you have the finest minds coming to
study technology, science and engineering, why would you
want to give them anything less than the best all-around
education? NC State is doing that.
“Scientists and poets alike are going to have lives with
hopes and dashed hopes, with dreams and dimmed dreams.
They are going to wonder, ‘How do I feel?’ ‘How do I fit?’
and ‘How does the universe work?’ The arts give us the
beginning vocabularies to answer those questions. And
that’s why they are so vital.”
— Caroline Barnhill
CHASS Distinguished Alumna
Nora Shepard makes time to write,
teach and share her passion for the
college’s creative writing program.
16
CHASS Accolades 2012
Reprinted from the Spring 2012 issue of NC State magazine,
a benefit of membership in the NC State Alumni Association.
to Victims
Voice
Giving
For the past two years, Charmaine Fuller Cooper (mpa ’07)
has helped lead that conversation as executive director of the
North Carolina Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation,
a newly formed division of the state’s Department of
Administration. The foundation was created in 2010 to help
a separate task force determine how to compensate people
sterilized by order of the North Carolina Eugenics Board in
the middle of the 20th century.
Officials thought welfare costs and crime could be reduced
by preventing reproduction among people deemed unfit to
have children. More than 7,600 men, women and children
were sterilized between 1929 and 1974, and as many as half
of them are believed to still be alive.
In January 2012, the task force recommended that the state
pay each surviving victim $50,000. It will be up to the
North Carolina legislature to approve that funding. To date,
about 75 victims have come forward.
Fuller Cooper has straddled the line between advocate and
bureaucrat, driven by a desire to advance the victims’ cause
It’s a difficult question, with no single
right answer: How much money should the
government pay somebody who had their
right to reproduce taken away by the state?
Charmaine Fuller
Cooper (MPA ’07).
Photo by Ted Richardson
while recognizing that no money has been awarded yet. “It’s
tough when you have somebody call you up and say, ‘My
father signed for my sterilization, and then he raped me and
his friends raped me,’” Fuller Cooper says. “This person was
able somehow to put that history in a pocket ... so they can
survive. And now we’re asking them to open that pocket up,
raggedy seams and all, and tell them we might be able to
provide you with a sewing kit that’s going to mend you. And
then nothing happens. I think that’s dangerous.”
Fuller Cooper grew up in Henderson, n.c., and majored
in political science at North Carolina Central University.
She came to NC State to earn her master’s degree in
public administration in the college’s School of Public and
International Affairs. While enrolled in the program, Fuller
Cooper became executive director of the Carolina Justice
Policy Center, which was instrumental in the 2009 passage
of the North Carolina Racial Justice Act. That act allows
death-row inmates to challenge their death sentences by
using statistics to prove racial bias by prosecutors and jurors.
Fuller Cooper says her graduate degree sharpened her
critical-thinking skills, allowing her to marry her passion for
justice and fairness with a focus on planning and process.
Phoebe Zerwick, a lecturer at Wake Forest University,
served as a member of the task force that developed the
recommendations for compensating victims of the eugenics
program. Zerwick says Fuller Cooper’s ability to work with
both her heart and her head made a huge difference. Shortly
after the task force began work, Fuller Cooper arranged
a day for victims to speak about what they had endured.
That event received national and international coverage and
reminded everybody what their goal was.
“She understood that the victims needed to be heard,”
Zerwick says.
— Ken Otterbourg
17
> chass.ncsu.edu
A group of volunteers travels to a foreign country to provide
aid. But, as so often happens, problems arise. Maybe the
volunteers aren’t a good fit, or their skill levels aren’t sufficient
for the task at hand. Perhaps there’s a clash of cultural values
between those helping and those being helped.
Psychology’s
NC State is leading global progress
in an emerging field of psychology.
emerging
field Such problems can greatly impede progress. Humanitarian
Work Psychology (hwp) is an emerging area of industrial-organizational
psychology specifically designed to address
work-related issues in just such humanitarian arenas.
The NC State University Department of Psychology is
helping lead the global development of the field.
When Associate Professor of Psychology Lori Foster
Thompson (pictured left) taught the world’s first hwp
graduate courses at the universities of Bologna and Barce-lona
in 2010, her students represented a true global
community. “My students came from Peru, Brazil, Africa,
Italy — all over the globe,” says Thompson. “We discussed
how to apply industrial-organizational psychology to
the humanitarian effort. We covered issues like women’s
work opportunities in developing countries, micro-credit
enterprises, online volunteerism and sex slavery.”
Soon after, during the 27th International Congress of
Applied Psychology, a division of the International Associ-ation
of Applied Psychology voted unanimously to establish
a four-year work group devoted to hwp. Thompson is
leading the group.
“People want to see our profession expand in this way,”
says Thompson. “We’ve given talks about hwp around the
world, and we have witnessed a lot of enthusiasm from
members of our field — both senior members and newer
student members.”
Alex Gloss joined NC State’s industrial-organizational
psychology doctoral program last fall and is serving as
coordinator for capacity-building on the global task
force. He’s finding plenty of people who aren’t yet familiar
with hwp.
“It’s industrial-organizational psychology with both a
prosocial edge and a focus on international development,”
he says. “That includes humanitarian aid work, disaster relief
and recovery efforts. hwp is also applied to more general
nongovernment organizations and intergovernmental
organizations that are involved in helping to improve the
well-being of people around the world.”
“We have colleagues who have been doing this independently
for decades,” Thompson adds, “but we didn’t have a common
name or language for it. Now that it’s becoming organized
and strategic, we think it can become a more powerful force
for good.”
— Christa Gala
18
CHASS Accolades 2012
“I was raised with the philosophy of ‘paying it forward’
to help others,” Replogle says. “Whether it was
volunteering in the hospital as an adolescent or serving
on a nonprofit’s board today, service is a major thread
woven throughout my life.”
Replogle, a former speech language pathologist
who specialized in traumatic brain injuries, recently
gave the College of Humanities and Social Sciences
a $25,000 endowment that will support students
minoring in nonprofit studies who are working in an
unpaid internship.
“When I was a student at Miami University in Ohio,
I was given a fellowship that really opened doors
for me that I might not have been able to go through
otherwise,” Replogle says. “I knew that when the
time came, I would want to give back in the area of
education because it is so important to me.”
Replogle began serving on the college’s Institute for
Nonprofits advisory board in 2010. That’s when she
decided to make her gift. “Once I met the students in
the program, I knew this was the perfect place for me
to give back,” she says.
The Institute for Nonprofits enhances the capacity of
nonprofit organizations by connecting the university
with the community. The institute offers a nonprofit
studies minor — one of only a few such undergraduate
programs in the country.
“Our nonprofit studies minor requires an internship,”
says institute director Mary Tschirhart. “Most of the
internships are unpaid, and some students opt for a
local internship so they won��t incur the living expenses
involved with an internship outside our area. Kristin
wanted to enable students to choose an internship
based on their passion for that organization rather
than basing it on the expenses that might be involved.”
A
From the moment she put on a candy
striper’s uniform as a child, Kristin
Replogle knew she would have a passion
for serving her entire life.
caring
Kristin Replogle helps prepare
the next generation of nonprofit
leaders through an endowment
she created in the college’s
Institute for Nonprofits.
pasion
for
19
> chass.ncsu.edu
Replogle’s endowment specifically favors students
who have shown a passion in caring for children.
“When I worked at Massachusetts General
Hospital, I often worked with abused children,”
she recalls. “As I got older and had children of
my own, my passion for caring for children grew
even stronger. And I’ve learned through the years
that your passion will always lead you down the
right path.”
Replogle lives in Raleigh with her husband,
John, ceo of Vermont-based company Seventh
Generation. The couple has four daughters.
Replogle serves on several local nonprofit orga-nizations
that work specifically to protect and
support children: SAFEChild, the Girl Scouts
and KidzNotes, a Durham-based organization
that teaches classical and orchestral music
to underserved children. Farther from home,
President Obama recently appointed Replogle to
the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts
for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Replogle is a big fan of the Institute for Non-profits.
“I think it’s wonderful that NC State has
a nonprofit studies program,” she says. “We need
so badly to prepare nonprofit leaders of the future.
If we can find young folks who have a passion for
service already, it is our obligation to help support
them if we can.”
Taylor Elkins is one of four recipients to date
of a scholarship from the Kristin Gatchel Rep-logle
Nonprofit Internship Fund. Replogle’s gift
allowed Elkins to intern with Outreach360 —
formerly Orphanage Outreach — in the Domini-can
Republic during the summer of 2011.
“The scholarship gave me the amazing opportunity
to stay at an all-boys orphanage in the town of
Jaibon, where I taught English, Spanish literacy
and public health to the boys at the home,”
Elkins says. “I was also able to work with the
local community in weekly summer camps. The
relationships I developed with the boys have had a
huge impact on my life, and that is what I am most
grateful to Kristin for.”
Replogle is grateful to have found students
who share her desire to give back. “Because
I’m so aware of the many needs of nonprofit
organizations, I’m thrilled to find students who
have a passion for giving back,” she says. “It is
very gratifying to give them the support they need
and watch them grow.”
— Caroline Barnhill
The Institute for Nonprofits
by the numbers
105
75
367
4
13,300+
42,000+
70
5
20
NC State students are currently enrolled in
the nonprofit studies minor program.
CHASS majors are minoring in nonprofit studies.
members belong to the Institute’s Community
of Nonprofit Scholars.
students have received the Kristin Replogle
Nonprofit Internship Fund scholarship to date.
people subscribe to the Institute for
Nonprofits’ Philanthropy Journal.
NC State grads hold a minor in nonprofit
studies; most of them are CHASS alums.
or more special reports are published by the
Philanthropy Journal each year, along with at
least 5 webinars.
nonprofit executives have been trained through
the Institute for Nonprofits’ new 2011–12
Achieving Collaborative Capacity for Executive
Success (ACCES) class.
of this country’s 1.5 million nonprofit
organizations are based in North Carolina.
For more information, visit the Institute for Nonprofits at
nonprofit.chass.ncsu.edu.
The Institute for Nonprofits was established in NC State’s
College of Humanities and Social Sciences in 2003.
20
CHASS Accolades 2012
were filled. The congressman wrote her back, however,
encouraging her to apply again. Latta did.
“Fortunately, Congressman Hefner’s office carved out the
stipend from their office budget,” says Latta. “My internship
was everything to me. Without it, I’m not sure I would have
ever realized my dream of working on Capitol Hill. I don’t
know that I would have even had the courage to try.”
Her one-month internship turned into a 14-year job with
Hefner — and a career that has lasted 27 years so far. Over
the years, Latta began to fully appreciate the importance
of her internship. She eventually established an endowment
fund that provides $1,500 each year for a student who has
applied and been accepted to an internship program in
Washington, d.c.
“I came across too many people — both here in Washington
and in North Carolina — who said, ‘Oh, I would have loved
to intern in Washington, but I couldn’t afford to.’ It broke
my heart to hear it,” says Latta.
When Sandra Latta (Political Science ’84) came to
NC State, she was certain she wanted to be an attorney.
She even helped found the Pre-Law Club at NC State.
Deep down, though, there was something else she
really wanted to do.
“I wanted to work on the Hill,” Latta confesses. “But
to me, that sounded analogous to saying I wanted to
go to Hollywood and be discovered.” Today, she serves
at the Pentagon as deputy chief of legislative affairs for
the u.s. Department of the Navy.
You might say politics was in Latta’s genes. Her
mother was the first woman ever elected to public
office in Mocksville, n.c. Her dad, J. Edward Latta
(NC State ’50), was also involved in town politics.
As a junior, Latta wrote to Congressman Bill Hefner
to try to secure an internship, but all intern positions
“For somebody who’s struggling to be in college, to take
a month away to be up here … that’s a tough financial
commitment. I wanted to help take the financial pressure off
a little bit. It also gave me a way to honor my past. It’s my
way of giving back.”
Although it’s the money the recipient needs (and that Latta
provides), the real gift is the chance to follow a dream.
“To me, it’s all about opportunity,” says Latta. “I was given
that opportunity, and there was a lot of luck involved. This
endowment is helping someone else have a little bit of that
luck, a little bit of that magic.”
— Christa Gala
Head
the Hill
An internship on Capitol Hill changed her
life. Alumna Sandra Latta wants to give
current students the same opportunity.
Sandra Latta with Congressman
Bill Hefner as she began her
internship in May 1984 …
… and on the eve of her departure
from the Hill in May 1998.
for
21
> chass.ncsu.edu
Fostering Stability
Children
When a child enters foster care, her whole
world is turned upside down.
Not only does she have new caregivers, a new home and
all-new rules; she also usually leaves her school and starts
over at a new one. All that upheaval can affect how a child
fares in school and her overall chances of academic and
social success.
Researchers in the college’s Center for Family and Community
Engagement (cface) and the Department of Social Work
are determined to help. They are launching Fostering Youth
Educational Success (Fostering yes) with funding from the
u.s. Children’s Bureau.
“The project focuses on educational stability for foster
children,” says Dr. Joan Pennell, professor of social work
and director of cface. “These children often struggle in the
school system as they deal with change and uncertainty in
other parts of their lives.”
Pennell is principal investigator for Fostering yes. Social
services, public schools, the court system, mental health
services and community nonprofit organizations are all
involved with the project.
Pennell and her team are working with groups in Cumberland
County, home to both Fort Bragg and Pope Army Air Field.
Nearly one-third of students in the school system are part
of military-connected families. These families can be subject
to high stress, particularly during times of deployment,
according to Pennell. In some instances, all of a family’s
caregivers are deployed simultaneously.
“School stability is particularly important for this area,”
Pennell says. “We’re also looking at ways to overcome
administrative delays in admitting children to a new school
when they enter foster care.”
“Ideally, children can stay in their same school to minimize
disruption,” says Dr. Jodi Hall, a clinical assistant professor
of social work at NC State and co-principal investigator
on the project. “But if they need to move to a new school,
important information needs to travel with them so their
new teachers have information that could contribute to their
academic and social success.”
Pennell hopes to increase the use of child and family teams
to enhance children’s chances for success. The teams include
youth and their families, teachers, social workers, pastors and
other community members who work together to develop a
plan to help children succeed in school and in the community.
The Fostering yes team’s research will inform the develop-ment
of new policies and procedures to support a stable
system for foster children. “We want to create a blueprint
that can be used throughout North Carolina and nationally,”
Pennell says.
Hear Dr. Pennell interviewed on WUNC radio
about Fostering YES:
wunc.org/programs/news/archive/TJP102511.mp3/view
for
— Christa Gala
22
CHASS Accolades 2012
For the past two summers, future Army officers at NC State
University have put in those hours of study to give themselves
an advantage in the field. And with funding from the
Department of Defense, Special Forces soldiers from Fort
Bragg will soon join them.
Teaching future military leaders
In 2009, the chass Department of Foreign Languages and
Literatures received a three-year, $800,000 Project go
grant to improve cultural and linguistic proficiency of
rotc students in five critical languages: Arabic,
Chinese, Persian, Russian and Urdu. That grant
launched Project gold, a summer intensive program
that provides two semesters of foreign language
instruction in just six weeks. rotc students receive
scholarships covering tuition in the language courses
or for a study-abroad program in India, China, Egypt
or Russia.
Language proficiency among rotc cadets is a high
priority for the u.s. Army, according to Capt. Joseph
Cofiori, assistant military science professor and a
member of the Army rotc cadre at NC State. “It’s a
force multiplier,” he says, “a skill that vastly increases
a soldier’s potential.”
“We don’t operate stateside,” Cofiori says. “We work
in places where people don’t speak English as their
primary language. It enhances the mission when
you can communicate with the locals in a language
they understand.”
“I think it’s crucial for us to send people who know not
just the languages but the culture of the places they��re
going,” says Dr. Inas Messiha, who teaches Arabic
the Talk
Ten hours a day studying a foreign language?
That’s daunting.
But it’s far less daunting than navigating
a foreign country as a member of the
military when you don’t have the ability to
communicate with local residents.
and soldiers Talk
Helping
students
23
> chass.ncsu.edu
The college’s Critical Languages Program offers
elementary, intermediate and advanced intensive
courses in:
• Arabic: one of the oldest languages in the world,
which today is spoken by more than 256 million people
in about 30 different countries, the most after English
and French.
• Chinese (Mandarin): one of the six official languages
of the United Nations, spoken by more than one billion
people around the world.
• Russian: spoken in Russia and the former Soviet
republics; it is the key language across the Caucasus
and Central Asia and one of the official languages of
the United Nations.
• Persian: the primary language spoken in Iran and one
of the official languages of Afghanistan.
• Pashto: the other official language of Afghanistan.
• Urdu: the language of Pakistan.
The pace is intense because students are covering
two semesters of material in just six weeks. Every day
they spend six hours in the classroom, after which
they have up to four hours of homework. The first three
hours each day focus more on the structural aspects of
the language. The second three hours of class focus on
developing communication skills in situations infused
with real culture. Afternoon activities include situational
role-playing; film clips; hands-on demos of music,
cooking and calligraphy; lab work and guest speakers.
The immersive approach worked for Zack Boyd, a cadet
studying political science at NC State. Boyd went to
China last summer as part of Project GO. “I remember
being in the middle of Shanghai, one of the largest
cities in the world. I was completely lost,” says Boyd, a
junior from Fayetteville. “I used the material we learned
in class to guide the taxi driver to our hotel.”
The utility of foreign language competency can prove
to be much more critical for a soldier or a diplomat.
Through its new collaboration with Fort Bragg,
NC State’s Language Training Center is changing
the way foreign languages and cultures are taught,
improving the linguistic and cultural literacy of our
future leaders.
Imm ersion Learning
at NC State. “The difference between how you say a
word correctly and incorrectly is sometimes literally
the difference between life and death.”
Teaching Special Forces soldiers
Project go proved to be highly successful and led
to a one-year, $1.8 million pilot grant from the
National Security Education Program to teach critical
languages to Special Forces soldiers. “We are using
the same immersive, functional, communicative
approach that we used with our rotc students
in Project go,” says Dr. Dwight Stephens, director of
NC State’s new Language Training Center. “It’s just
that now we’re teaching not only university students
but also soldiers at the John F. Kennedy Special
Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg.”
The grant promotes teacher training too, and the
Language Training Center at NC State produces up
to 10 workshops in second-language acquisition and
instruction techniques for the six critical languages.
In winter and spring, NC State will provide intensive
language courses on base at Fort Bragg. During the
summer, active-duty soldiers will come to NC State to
join rotc students and regular university students from
all over the country for courses in all the languages.
“The rotc students will definitely benefit from taking
classes alongside members of the military who have
been in some unusual places doing some extraordinary
things,” says Dr. Ruth Gross, professor of German
and head of the Department of Foreign Languages
and Literatures. Gross is also principal investigator for
the project.
The partnership between NC State and the Special
Warfare Center and School is part of a larger effort
involving the University of North Carolina system
and the military. It marks an evolution in cooperation
between the military and higher education, according
to Stephens.
“The historical separation of the public academic
institutions and the military is dissolving,” he says.
“We are realizing there is a lot to share and a lot to
learn from each other.”
“The difference between how you say a word correctly
and incorrectly is sometimes literally the difference
between life and death.”
24
CHASS Accolades 2012
While Badger was stationed at Fort Bragg, he completed the
Special Forces Qualification Course. He also found time
to read the work of John Kessel, a professor in NC State’s
creative writing program and author of many popular
science-fiction novels and stories. Badger had always been
a fan of science fiction and fantasy, which led him to Kessel.
“While I was still at Bragg and before leaving for Afghanistan,
I traveled to NC State just to meet John Kessel,” Badger
recalls. “We had a really great conversation.”
Kessel, the director of Creative Writing at the time, was also
teaching undergraduate and graduate classes. “He made a
lot of time for me, and we talked about writing,” Badger
says. “He invited me to write him when I was overseas, and
I did. He encouraged me from there to consider applying to
the mfa program.”
While he was still in Afghanistan, Badger learned he’d
been accepted to the mfa program. “I’ve always enjoyed
writing, but I didn’t know how formal my writing training
would be or should be. The military, obviously, is a much
different place. I don’t know how seriously I was considering
formal study.”
Badger came home from Afghanistan in July 2009 and
started the mfa program soon after. Toward the end of his
first semester, Badger paid a visit to Wilton Barnhardt, a
professor who had studied at Oxford and was then the mfa
program director.
“I told Wilton I’d be interested in studying at Oxford,” says
Badger. “He didn’t laugh me out of his office, as he maybe
should have. He asked me what I proposed to study there. I
said, ‘Well, I’m still feeling that out.’
“Wilton said, ‘Find something you’re passionate about doing
and come over to England with me in the summer when I’m
leading the Oxford Study Abroad program. I’ll introduce
you to some folks. We’ll do what we can to make it happen.’
From the moment I walked in his office, he took me absolutely
seriously as a writer.”
As a kid, Will Badger, MFA ’11, wanted to
be a writer so he could explore all the places
in his head he was sure he’d never see in
person. Ironically, now he’s doing both.
Soldier
Oxford turns
Scholar
Will Badger in Paktya
Province, Afghanistan.
Sometimes you have to make a tough choice: a Fulbright
scholarship? Or Oxford University in England?
It was a good problem to have for Will Badger, a 2011
graduate of NC State’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative
Writing program. After all, just two years prior, Badger was
serving in Afghanistan as a Green Beret medic, dodging
death every day.
In the end, Badger chose Oxford. But first, how did he end
up at NC State at all?
After taking an honors undergraduate degree from Brigham
Young University, Badger enlisted in the military for a variety
of reasons.
“I had a desire to serve, although I wasn’t a big fan of the
Iraq war,” says Badger, 33. “I thought I needed to experience
it for myself and do my part for the country before I could
speak in a committed way about the rightness or wrongness
of various enterprises.” The adventure, camaraderie and
maybe even a little old-fashioned romanticism appealed to
him as well.
25
> chass.ncsu.edu
“The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a
stranger. The second time … an honored guest. The
third time … you become family.”
— from Three Cups of Tea, by G. Mortensen and D. Oliver
Three cups of tea
they taught us (waving the book about)
a new way to win the war
With the first cup
fathers elbowed children into razor wire
to grab the Pokemon backpacks passed out like party favors,
the chai sweet and steeped
with sugar that looked like quartz
During the second cup
cricket teams from as far as Parachinar
came for the Chamkani Games
but some chai slopped over the chipped lip of my cup
soaking my shirt when
riots broke out before
conversation
did
As the spinach-like dregs of the last cup
tickled my lips
a grandfather — actually my host — stole a radio
it was hard to watch them beat him
how he bleated
The cups come from a Balti proverb, anyway.
Maybe their mountains are nice
this time of year.
— Will Badger
Afghani Chai
A few months later, Badger ended up in John Balaban’s
poetry class. Balaban, who had become the next
mfa director, had been a conscientious objector to
the Vietnam War, working for the Committee of
Responsibility in Vietnam. As alternative service,
Balaban treated war-injured children and evacuated
them to the United States when necessary.
It was an interesting dynamic: the soldier and the
conscientious objector.
Will Badger at the
Shakespeare Institute,
Stratford-upon-Avon.
“The Vietnam War caused any number of chasms in our society
in the ’60s and ’70s,” says Badger. “He [Balaban] felt strongly
against our involvement in Vietnam, and his beliefs took him
there. I was really impressed with him as a person and as a writer,
because here was someone who felt strongly enough to involve
himself personally. I wasn’t sure how he would relate to a recent
war vet, but he went out of his way to make sure I felt comfortable.”
It was in Balaban’s class that Badger finally wrote about his war
experiences, in a poem called “Afghani Chai.” (See sidebar.)
Balaban sent the poem to the international literary journal War,
Literature and the Arts, which published it (volume 22, 2010).
Next, Badger applied for a Fulbright scholarship to translate Polish
author Janusz Zajdel’s novel Limes inferior into English. With
Barnhardt’s help, he also applied to Oxford. He never dreamed
that both Fulbright and Oxford would come calling.
In the end, his choice revolved around logistics and family.
He headed to Oxford with his wife and children to study witch-craft
in Shakespeare and the supernatural in the early modern
period. He’ll be there for several years, first earning his Master
of Studies before moving on to a Doctor of Philosophy. And even
though he declined the Fulbright, Badger still plans to translate
the Zajdel novel.
“He’s a good writer, and he’s probably going to be a brilliant
scholar,” says Balaban. “Everything he does is done perfectly
well. I guess the surprise to all of us is that he came to us from
a battlefield as a medic in Afghanistan. Somehow, that almost
seems irrelevant now.”
— Christa Gala
26
CHASS Accolades 2012
Daniel C. Gunter iii (History and Spanish Language and
Literature ’00) was named the university’s Outstanding
Young Alumnus. Gunter (pictured above), an associate with
dl a Piper, has served two terms on the chass Advisory
Board. He is on the Alumni Association Board of Directors
and the Lonnie Poole Golf Course Campaign Committee.
A lifetime member of the university’s Alumni Association, he
hosts “DENers with the Pack” to support current students.
As an alumnus of Sigma Nu Fraternity, he works with
University Development on fundraising for the fraternity
and has served on the Redevelopment of Greek Court Task
Force. As a member of the Leonidas Lafayette Polk Society,
Gunter provides support to chass, the Alumni Association
and the University Scholars program, among other areas of
the university.
“So many people at NC State — professors, administrators,
classmates and others — have enriched my life academically,
professionally and personally,” Gunter says. “Since I could
never pay back all that I’ve gotten from NC State, it made
the most sense to me to pass it on to the next generation of
students and to give my time to the university however I can.”
“David, Celia and Daniel are three tireless ambassadors for
NC State University and the College of Humanities and
Social Sciences,” says Dean Jeff Braden. “I am proud to see
their contributions recognized among those who make this
university great.”
David S. Jolley (Economics, ’70) and his wife Celia G. Jolley
(Education, ’83) received the Meritorious Service Award
for their outstanding contributions to the university. David,
a chass alumnus, was a founding member of NC State’s
Board of Visitors. He has served on boards including the
NC State University Foundation, the NC State University
Endowment Board and the Achieve! Campaign Steering Com-mittee.
He currently serves on the chass Advisory Board.
David is vice president of commercial lending at c&f Bank
in Williamsburg, Va. A retired educator, Celia has been
active with the College of Education’s Campaign Steering
Committee, Advisory Board and Leadership Board, among
other endeavors.
The Jolleys (both pictured below) are members of the
C.W. Dabney Lifetime Giving Society and the R. S. Pullen
Society. Their generosity has touched numerous programs
across the university.
“We try to stay tuned to the needs of students,” David says.
“Celia and I owe a lot of our success to NC State. We’ve
been well served by higher education, so being involved is a
critically important part of what we do.”
alums
recognized
Alumni from the college were
recently honored by the NC State
Alumni Association at its Evening
of Stars gala that recognizes
those who have made a difference
in their communities and given
back to their alma mater.
— Caroline Barnhill
for service
27
> chass.ncsu.edu
Transformational
Traditions
While co-chair of the
Commission on Traditions,
2012–2013 Student Body
President Andy Walsh
helped reintroduce
Tuffy, the living mascot,
to athletic events.
ncsu.edu
Learn more at
NC State: For 125 years, transforming students into leaders.
“Our traditions and our history are what bind us together,” says Andy
Walsh, Political Science, class of ‘13. “I honor the great traditions of this
campus, and I want to help create traditions for the generations to come.”
Now Andy, a fi rst-generation college student, is spearheading a major
fundraising effort: raising $200,000 for the Coaches’ Corner just outside
Reynolds Coliseum. If Andy succeeds, busts of Everett Case, Norm Sloan
and Jim Valvano will be unveiled in 2013, next to the existing tribute to
Kay Yow.
28
CHASS Accolades 2012
Janet Nguyen (International Studies, ’14)
is working to establish NC State’s first
Asian sorority.
“I want to help student leaders of our generation grow
into the world leaders of tomorrow,” says Nguyen.
“We’re not just going to be a sisterhood — we’re going
to help these young women build skills for the future.”
Asian interest sororities are relatively new in the South.
Only a handful are active on campuses in the UNC
system. Read more about this transformational young
leader at chass.ncsu.edu.
Sisterhood
Creating
College of Humanities & Social Sciences
Campus Box 8101
Raleigh, NC 27695-8101

1
> chass.ncsu.edu
Forging a
Sustainable
Path
student takes
interdisciplinary route
The Lebanese
Legacy in
North Carolina
Giving Voice
to Victims
for alumni & f Accccoladeriends of CHsASS
ACC Road Trip
2
CHASS Accolades 2012
But those who were deaf or hard of hearing had to rely on
the skills of an American Sign Language (asl) interpreter.
As President Obama spoke from behind the podium about
the American Jobs Act, a man in black stood behind
him, relaying his message to those who could not hear it
for themselves. That man was none other than chass Dean
Jeff Braden.
Typically, licensed asl interpreters serve at large public
events. However, in situations such as an unexpected visit
from the president of the United States, some flexibility is
required. University officials contacted two licensed asl
interpreters and asked them to serve during the president’s
speech, but there wasn’t enough time to get all the
information required to meet the White House’s stringent
security-clearance standards for both interpreters. To
ensure that every attendee received the president’s mes-sage,
the university turned to Braden, who gladly accepted
the assignment. He was joined by asl interpreter Grace
Bullen Sved.
As a former certified asl interpreter, Braden has a long
history with the language. During his senior year of high
school, his mother — a social worker — placed a deaf child
with special needs in a neighbor’s home. She asked Braden
to help the family with child care after school. He enjoyed
the task so much that he continued sign language studies
in college.
As an undergraduate at Beloit College, Braden spent a year
working in the deaf-blind unit at the Perkins School for the
Blind, gaining hands-on experience in sign language.
Braden spent his junior year at Gallaudet University, the
world’s only university specifically designed to meet the
needs of people who are deaf and hearing-impaired. He
was so confident in his asl skills that when he returned to
Beloit as a senior, he talked his way into a job teaching asl
to his peers.
Braden’s signing skills have given him access to a number of
valuable opportunities, such as the year he spent teaching
sign language to chimpanzees at the University of Nevada,
Reno, where he worked alongside renowned psychologists
and chimpanzee researchers Trixie and Allen Gardner.
Braden’s gig for President Obama was not his first experience
with interpreting for celebrities. He interpreted for Jackson
Browne, Joni Mitchell and others at the May 1979 No
Nukes rally in Washington, d.c., that drew 65,000 activists
in the aftermath of the Three Mile Island incident.
Braden is grateful for the broadened perspective he has
gained through his experiences with sign language. “It
certainly expands your sense of diversity,” he says. “Deafness
is another culture. Sign language is another language. And
at Gallaudet, I had the experience of being a minority, which
definitely will change your outlook on life. It gave me a deep
appreciation for what it means to be human.”
President Barack Obama received an
enthusiastic welcome from NC State last
fall when he spoke at Reynolds Coliseum to
rally support for his economic policies. Most
people listened carefully to his every word. Seeing
Mesage
the
— Jen Jernigan, CHASS communication intern
Dean Jeff Braden signed
for President Obama
on campus.
3
> chass.ncsu.edu
CHASS alum and Emmy Award-winning producer
and director Neal Hutcheson has spent the last
10 years documenting cultural change in North
Carolina, from deep Appalachia to the farthest
reaches of the Outer Banks.
Turning his lens down east, Hutcheson has produced Atlantic
(2012), a documentary that depicts the challenges facing families
who have lived and worked for generations along North Carolina’s
Core Sound. In a string of small fishing villages, residents have
adapted to the harsh environment, unique ecosystem, and ever-changing
topography that define the region. Now residents are
seeing their rich traditions eroded by water pollution, development
and relocated outsiders. What happens when ancestral attitudes of
interdependence between community and ecology are eroded by a
rising tide of free-market forces? Visit ncsu.edu/linguistics/ncllp/
for details about the North Carolina Language and Life Project and
the documentaries produced through the sociolinguistics program,
where Hutcheson is a staff member.
She says her instructors helped students learn as
much as they could and pushed them to succeed.
Donnelly hit the interview circuit with con-fidence,
a solid portfolio, a website and a dvd of
her work. Less than a month after she graduated,
she was offered two jobs. She took a position
as a digital journalist/reporter with nbc affiliate
wsls 10 in Roanoke, Va., where she continues to
work today. Donnelly’s experience bears out the
Wall Street Journal’s report (September 2010)
that NC State scored among the top 20
universities with job recruiters looking to hire the
best-trained and best-prepared graduates. Read
more about Donnelly and other chass alumni at
chass.ncsu.edu.
By the time Morgan Donnelly (Commu-nication
and Political Science ’10)
graduated, she had completed three
internships in her area of focus, she
had studied abroad and she had
conducted research.
Prepared
to Succeed
Graduating
Atlantic
4
CHASS Accolades 2012
Students and others who passed through
Caldwell Lounge during the National Day
on Writing were invited to learn about —
and play with — new ways of sharing the
written and spoken word.
As the afternoon progressed, the hallways became covered
with sticky notes like those posted on SecretsWall.com.
“I’m afraid no one cares” appeared on one note. “I do” was
later scrawled on a note nearby. A scar journal allowed
writers to share stories of their scars, physical or otherwise.
Others interacted with a Kinect-style poetry site, seeing
huge projected images of themselves covered in poetry.
“Self-expression is alive and well,” says Casie Fedukovich,
assistant professor of English. “We wanted to share some
of the many possibilities for putting thoughts out into
the world.” wall
handwriting’s
on the
The
Scientific American highlighted forensic
anthropologist Ann Ross in several columns
about her work in tackling complicated murder
cases, in addressing risk factors for genocide
and in developing the new 3-D software that’s
helping scientists identify the gender and
ancestral origins of human remains with greater
speed and precision.
The Atlantic Monthly technology blog featured
English professor John Wall’s “Virtual Paul’s
Church” project. Wall is working to recreate
the spatial and acoustic dynamics of a sermon
John Donne preached in St. Paul’s Square in
17th-century London. As the blog Inside Higher
Education described it, Wall wants to “enable
make
headlines
We
Visit chass.ncsu.edu to read about these
and other faculty in the news.
5
> chass.ncsu.edu
learners to experience historical events or places
instead of reading off a page.” Learn more about
John Wall’s project at chass.ncsu.edu.
During this election season, our political
scientists are called upon regularly for their
insights and expertise. Andy Taylor and Steven
Greene are quoted in the Wall Street Journal,
Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
and other national media outlets on topics
including the governor’s race, taxes, the
Republican presidential primaries and the key
battleground state of North Carolina.
When Piedmont Laureate Scott Huler was writing
a blog post for Scientific American about the
Dan Neil (MA, English ’86), a Pulitzer Prize
winner who writes an automotive column for
the Wall Street Journal, appears prominently
in the recent documentary Revenge of the
Electric Car.
The film follows four entrepreneurs as they fight to bring
the electric car back to the world market during a global
recession. Neil returned to campus to discuss the film and
the future of the electric car. See the interview we conducted
with Neil in the alumni section of chass.ncsu.edu by clicking
on the Alumni Profile Videos tag.
electric
car
Revenge
of the
Penn State child abuse scandal, he called on psychologist and CHASS
Dean Jeff Braden for his expertise in human nature.
Bloomberg Businessweek asked historian Blair Kelley to weigh in on the
widening income gap within the black community.
USA Today ran articles about how to avoid scams targeting the elderly.
The articles featured Karen Bullock, Monica Leach and Jodi Hall from
our Department of Social Work.
CHASS faculty frequently appear on WUNC radio’s The State of Things
to discuss everything from politics to Kafka, films and historic events.
The Atlantic highlighted sociologist and occupational-injury expert
Michael Schulman’s research about the lack of parental awareness
regarding the hazards their teens are facing in the workplace.
6
CHASS Accolades 2012
Dean Jeff Braden gives a flip about the staff in
the College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Actually, make that dozens of flips. With Mr. Wuf looking on
approvingly, the dean and his fellow administrators hosted a
picnic to honor and thank the 135 staff in the college for all
their hard work and dedication. “We have not been able to give
raises for the past several years,” the dean said as he flipped
burgers and hot dogs. “And we have asked staff members to take
on more and more work. We wanted to celebrate our staff and
let them know we value what they bring to the college each and
every day.” Lucky staff members also received items donated by
businesses along Hillsborough Street and beyond.
Accolades
2012 Edition
CHASS Advisory Board
President
Emily Barbour
Barry Beith
Erica Boisvert
Steve Bullard
Lee Garrett
Terrence Holt
Bryan Hum
David Jolley
Maria Kingery
NC State Foundation Board Liaison
Kathy Council
Accolades is published by the NC State University
College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Dean
Jeffery P. Braden
Editor, CHASS Director of Communication
Lauren Kirkpatrick
Contributing Writers
Caroline Barnhill
Christa Gala
Jen Jernigan
Lauren Kirkpatrick
Ken Otterbourg
Jimmy Ryals
Matt Shipman
Diana Smith
Design and Photography
NC State University Communication Services
Jennifer Martineau
Charlie Perusse
Harold Pettigrew
Carol Rahmani
Brooks Raiford
Brad Remmey
Bing Sizemore
Ken Wooten
NC State University is dedicated to equality of opportunity.
The University does not condone discrimination against
students, employees, or applicants in any form. NC State
commits itself to positive action to secure equal opportunity
regardless of race, color, creed, national origin, religion,
sex, age, or disability. In addition, NC State welcomes all
persons without regard to sexual orientation. 32,000 copies
of this public document were printed at a cost of
50¢ per copy.
7
> chass.ncsu.edu
Head for the Hill
20
transformation
NC State marks its 125th anniversary during 2012–2013. As we honor our traditions
and all those who have gone before to help create such a strong and vital university,
we are also highlighting alumni, students, faculty and others who have been catalysts
for transformation.
As we celebrate all we have been and plan for the challenges that lie ahead, we can take
great satisfaction in the spirit of transformation that continues to shape our priorities.
Be proud, reader. Be very proud.
stories OF
18
Kristin Replogle is transforming students’
lives. Through her benevolence, they can
participate in unpaid internships with
nonprofits far and wide.
ACC Road Trip
10
Fostering Stability for Children 21
The Lebanese Legacy in North Carolina 12
Helping Students and Soldiers Talk the Talk 22
Alums Recognized
for Service
26
Soldier Turns
Oxford Scholar
24
Giving Voice
to Victims
16
14
Distinguished alumna Nora Shepard is a
teacher and poet. Through her tenacious
support of the creative writing program
at NC State, she is helping shape the
Triangle region into an arts mecca that
celebrates the literary arts.
8
Ariel Fugate incorporated sociology,
agriculture and agroecology into her
self-designed course of study. Her
quest and her passion? To understand
and share environmentally sustainable
practices related to the food we eat.
17
Lori Foster Thompson is helping lead
global development in the emerging field
of Humanitarian Work Psychology.
8
CHASS Accolades 2012
path
For some students, college is a fairly
straightforward path: Choose a major
you enjoy, take the required courses and
eventually graduate. For others, such as
Ariel Fugate, the road is full of twists
and turns. Fugate, a Caldwell Fellow,
forged a path that took her from zoology
through wildlife and fisheries and
agriculture, into a close examination
of sociology and finally to a major
she designed herself in the college’s
interdisciplinary studies program.
Fugate arrived on campus from Lexington, Ky., as a
zoology major. She was an aspiring veterinarian. “I
was pretty narrow-minded at that point, focused on
a career I knew something about,” she recalls. “But
then I started looking into how wildlife and humans
are affected by agriculture.”
Led by her curiosity, Fugate signed up for a class
in wildlife management. That course opened her
eyes to the adverse effects that some farming
practices can have on wildlife habitat and water
quality. As she studied conservation practices, Fugate
became interested in agroecology, the study of ecology
on farms.
She was also intrigued by societal issues related to food
and sustainability. The field of sociology beckoned.
“I wanted to know more about the social aspect of
eating and how that affects human health,” she says.
“I also wanted to see how our eating habits impact
the environment.”
As Fugate became more informed, she grew increasingly concerned
about the public’s lack of general awareness about these issues.
“I don’t think many of us make a connection between our per-sonal
eating habits and the toll those habits take on us, on the
community and on the earth,” she says. “I wanted to find some
ways to build awareness and to encourage people to develop eating
habits that were healthier and that supported the environment.”
Fugate started with a population with whom she could readily
identify: students. And she chose a venue where they consumed
many of their daily meals: the campus dining halls. She conducted
research on NC State University’s food systems, examining what
was served in the dining halls, asking how the university decided
what to serve and learning where that food came from.
She is proud to report that the university is moving toward a goal
of ensuring that at least 10 percent of the food it serves is locally
sourced by the end of 2012.
She is also encouraged by the university’s response to some of her
research findings. While she was an intern with the university’s
Office of Waste Reduction and Recycling, she conducted a waste
audit of one of the dining hall’s dumpsters. “We found that 70
percent of what was in the dumpster was compostable,” she says.
“Based on our findings, the dining halls across campus began
composting. I like to think my research helped contribute to this
tipping point by spreading more awareness.”
a sustainable Forg ing
9
> chass.ncsu.edu
Fugate says her self-designed interdisciplinary major has been
the perfect way to tie together her interests in agriculture,
sustainability and sociology. “Food touches many areas, so
it’s hard to limit it to just science or just sociology,” she says.
“The interdisciplinary studies option gives me the ability to
explore both the scientific and social aspects of food.”
This semester, for example, Fugate is conducting research in
a nearby county about food environments. “We are looking
at such factors as where supermarkets are located in relation
to neighborhoods and to the residents’ income levels,” she
says. “My major lets me apply what I’m learning to the real
world. I have become much more focused on how we can
make a difference in communities at large.”
Fugate’s efforts won’t end when she graduates this spring.
Nor will her interdisciplinary orientation. “I intend to keep
learning about food insecurity and sustainability,” she says.
“And I would like to keep working with interdisciplinary
topics, whether it’s through education or a communications
position in which I could raise awareness about food issues.”
— Jen Jernigan, CHASS communication intern
Ariel Fugate (Interdisciplinary
Studies ‘12) helped start the
Campus Farmers Market.
Outside the dining halls, Fugate was inspired to help provide
fresh, local produce to students and others on campus. Along
with fellow student Eric Ballard (’09), she co-founded the
Campus Farmers Market in 2009 to draw attention to and
build support for sustainable food systems.
Farmers and other vendors set up shop on the brickyard
every Wednesday during the growing season to sell their
produce, meats and cheeses, body lotion and other crafts —
all of which are produced in North Carolina. The market is
distinguished by its focus on education. “We want customers
to find high-quality affordable products, and we want to
increase their awareness about how important it is to support
the local economy,” Fugate says.
Beyond campus, Fugate shared her passion for sustainable
practices by co-teaching a “Cooking Matters” course for
children at the Boys Club of Raleigh through the nonprofit
Inter-Faith Food Shuttle. The course is part of a national
curriculum on healthy eating called “Share Our Strength.”
Fugate and another Caldwell Fellow were responsible for
incorporating a gardening component into the curriculum
to give the young boys a feel for food sustainability, which
is something she says they genuinely appreciated. “We
used something called vermicompost,” she explains. “It’s
essentially the process of breaking food waste down through
the addition of worms. The boys loved that!”
10
CHASS Accolades 2012
Kane isn’t afraid to get down and dirty, and his producers
don’t hesitate to put him in wacky situations. He has painted
the field at NC State and marched with the University of
Virginia band at halftime. This year, he covered every inch
of exposed skin in gold glitter to cheer alongside the iconic
Florida State fans known as the Glitter Guys.
“For three weeks it looked like I had blond highlights in my
hair from all the gold,” says Kane, who has earned 11 Emmys
during his career, including the 2011 Southeast regional
Emmy Award for outstanding achievement in on-air sports
reporting. “To this day, I’ll reach into my pocket and a little
speck of glitter will fall out. But it’s great to experience the
energy and atmosphere at these schools.”
Kane, a former NC State basketball player who earned his
degree in communication, has been immersed in the world of
sports broadcasting since graduation. An unpaid internship
at Turner Sports in Atlanta evolved into a 14-year career
providing on-air promotions and creative services for Fox
Sports South. He’s emceed a steady stream of acc gigs and
even developed his own video production company, pack 30
Productions llc.
In recent months, Kane landed an acting job playing a
reporter for an upcoming film starring Denzel Washington
and John Goodman. It’s directed by Robert Zemeckis, who
also directed the Oscar-winning films Back to the Future
and Forrest Gump.
Kane said his experience in athletics at NC State fueled his
drive to develop a career in on-air sports. Before walking on
with the basketball team in the 1992–1993 season, he served
as a manager under the late Jim Valvano and later under Les
Robinson. “Coach Valvano always used to say that all you
can do is to put yourself in a position to win,” Kane says.
“I’ve applied that in the rest of my life. If I want something,
I do everything I can to put myself in that position so that
at the end of the day, if I don’t succeed, at least I know I had
a chance.”
— Diana Smith
ACC Tommy Kane (Comm ’93) is living every ACC
fan’s dream. He doesn’t spend his autumns
sitting in front of a TV watching football.
Instead, Kane travels to a different ACC game
every week to report on each school’s game-day
traditions for his award-winning show,
ACC Road Trip, produced by Raycom Sports.
Road Trip
Reprinted from the Winter 2012 issue of NC State magazine,
a benefit of membership in the NC State Alumni Association.
Tommy Kane (Comm ’93) included
an interview with Vice Chancellor
Tom Stafford at the Belltower
during filming for ACC Road Trip.
11
> chass.ncsu.edu
“We talk about communication industries — plural — when we refer to
the world these students will be entering,” Alchediak says. “There are so
many directions they can move in when they graduate, from broadcast
work to the film business, public relations, advertising, you name it.
There’s a huge corporate and industrial market that needs skilled and
savvy professionals to help with multimedia design, to give them a strong
Web presence, to create all kinds of promotional campaigns.”
Alchediak’s students had lots of questions for Kane, including these:
What is your involvement behind the scenes in
ACC Road Trip?
My producer at Raycom Sports and I work together on all the
setup and preproduction aspects of the show. In this digital
world, you have to be prepared to do it all — to write, produce
and edit. And you have to market yourself.
Check out the ACC Road Trip episode
highlighting NC State’s homecoming
game at theacc.com/roadtrip.
What do you do in the off-season?
I hustle. I’m involved with a lot of other projects, including
corporate and business work. I just helped a hospital put
together a promotional campaign. There’s lots of room to
help people get their message out through video production.
I’m also working on a pilot show about what athletes do off
the field. And this opportunity to work on a movie? Wow. I
also coach high school basketball.
How do you like owning your own business?
It’s exhilarating. It’s also hard work. I’m taking calls at all
hours for ACC Road Trip, managing lots of the details of the
episode I’m working on plus the next one coming up. But I
love acc football and basketball. So it’s a great life.
When Tommy Kane recently visited campus to film an
episode of ACC Road Trip, he spoke to students in Jim
Alchediak’s digital video production class (COM 357).
from a pro
Kane offered this advice to students
who want to break into the business:
Don’t be afraid to put yourself out there.
Be confident when you’re creative.
Don’t just push the buttons. Think outside the box.
Don’t necessarily do what you did last time.
Mix it up.
Keep growing. Keep pushing yourself.
Stay flexible.
Manage your clients’ expectations.
Cultivate your relationships.
Say “I tried,” even if you fall on your face.
Always, always put yourself in a position to win.
Words of wisdom
12
CHASS Accolades 2012
Khayrallah, a pharmaceutical executive, came to
the United States from Lebanon in 1983 with his
wife, Vera. Committed to preserving the area’s
Lebanese culture and heritage, he wanted to find a
way to capture the history of his people and share
it with others. When Khayrallah was introduced to
Akram Khater, professor of Middle Eastern history at
NC State, he shared his ideas about educating North
Carolinians about Lebanese-Americans.
With the help of Khayrallah’s generous gift, the
Khayrallah Program for Lebanese-American Studies
launched in fall 2010 to research, document, preserve
and publicize the story of Lebanese-Americans in
North Carolina and to educate the public on their
contributions to the state. As part of the project, a
team at NC State is creating these educational tools:
a documentary on the history of the community
that will air on UNC-TV;
a traveling museum exhibit that will launch at
NC State’s D.H. Hill Library in 2013;
a resource book and lesson plans for K-12
educators to teach the history of Lebanese-
Americans in our state; and
an online archive housing the personal stories,
letters, photos, home movies and newspaper
clippings of the state’s Lebanese-Americans.
“The story of Lebanese-Americans, like many
immigrants, is one of hard work that led to success
for themselves and their families and innumerable
economic and cultural contributions to North
Carolina,” Khater explains. “Today, there are about
16,000 first-, second- or third-generation immigrants
in our state, largely concentrated in the Triangle and
Charlotte. Early immigrants were more concentrated
Moise Khayrallah was troubled. In the wake
of the September 11 tragedy, the image
many Americans had of Arabs — including
his community, the Lebanese — was one
of conflict, violence and terrorism. After
more than 120 years of being an integral
part of the history and life of North
Carolina, seemingly overnight Lebanese-
Americans had become outsiders again.
Legacy IN North
Carolina
Lebanese The
Watch the trailer for the documentary,
Cedars in the Pines: The Lebanese In North Carolina,
at faculty.chass.ncsu.edu/akhater/lac.
13
> chass.ncsu.edu
in eastern North Carolina — along what is now the
I-95 corridor — as they made their way from Ellis Island
down south.”
The first wave of immigrants, who came to North Carolina
between the 1880s and the 1920s, settled in such towns as
New Bern, Goldsboro, Wilson and Wilmington — right
off the train tracks throughout the state. Nearly all of
them “peddled” to earn a living, carrying suitcases filled
with knickknacks like lace, buttons, needles and napkins —
items one would find in a city store but that weren’t easily
accessible to people living in small towns and on isolated
farms across the state.
“They became salesmen offering products and services that
small towns and farmers didn’t have, but also a real link to
the community, bringing news and gossip from the larger
cities,” Khater says. “They worked very hard to be a part
of the local communities — joining Boy Scouts, sports
teams, community groups and more — and have continued
to integrate themselves into the community to this day,
enriching it with festivals, celebrations, restaurants, culture
and religions, their talents and entrepreneurial spirit.”
Khater and a team of public history graduate students are
working to interview immigrants and collect and digitize
maps, images, newspaper clippings and more to help tell the
story of a group of people that many feel have long been
invisible to the great majority of North Carolinians.
“We started capturing the voices of this community through
oral histories, in part because there came a point when we
exhausted the resources of libraries, historical societies and
archives,” explains Caroline Muglia, a graduate student
working on the project. “The truth is that Lebanese families
in North Carolina have collected the richest history of the
community to date. They lived the history.”
Muglia says that returning the project to the community
“has been the goal all along. We are building a platform for
the narratives of these people to continue to evolve and serve
as an educational tool in the process.”
Akram Khater agrees, and he emphasizes his gratitude
for Moise Khayrallah’s generosity. “Without his foresight
and philanthropy, we would not have been able to take
on the project,” Khater says. “Much of this oral history,
these important stories, might have been lost — and with
them, we would have lost an important part of North
Carolina’s history.”
— Caroline Barnhill
For more information about the project, visit
lac.chass.ncsu.edu.
Lebanese-Americans from across North
Carolina have shared family photos, letters
and documents to help tell their story.
14
CHASS Accolades 2012
advocate
teacher,
poet, Celebrated alum
Museum of Art’s docent organization, helping to launch the
community arts school Arts Together and volunteering in
the preservation of historic homes.
“I always found NC State to be such a warm and welcoming
place,” she recalls. “When my husband and I were building
our home outside Edenton, we spent a lot of time at the
College of Design’s library looking into architecture. And
then when we had school-aged daughters, we’d take them to
D.H. Hill Library for research and studying. We loved being
on campus and using the resources available here.”
But Shepard’s involvement with the creative writing program
came about a bit more serendipitously.
“A friend had given me a brochure for a summer writing
program at NC State in 2001,” she says. “At the time,
there was not a master of fine arts program, but there were
lots of wonderful creative writing people in the college. It
wasn’t even in my mind to get a degree. I just wanted to be
a better writer.”
Shepard signed up for a writing program workshop that
NC State held in conjunction with the North Carolina
Writers’ Network. Her teacher was poet Betty Adcock.
Shepard followed Adcock to Meredith College for additional
classes. “At some point, Betty told me that this poet named
John Balaban — who was a two-time National Book Award
nominee — was going to be directing a new creative writing
program at NC State,” Shepard remembers. “Betty asked
me to take a class with him, so I did. I felt very brave, taking
that class at my age, but it was wonderful. I loved being
with the students. I loved their hearts and their minds. And
along with Betty, John Balaban became my mentor.”
While Shepard was taking one course every semester as a
continuing education student, the college was launching the
mfa program. “I ended up having enough credits that if I
“My father became flustered when transporting my mother
to the hospital, and he drove to a building on Hillsborough
Street. There he discovered his mistake and arrived at Rex
Hospital on the corner of St. Mary’s and Wade Avenue with
just a bit of time to spare,” Shepard says with a smile.
Shepard, a poet and alumna of the college’s Master of Fine
Arts in Creative Writing program, was recently honored at
the NC State Alumni Association’s eighth annual Evening of
Stars gala as the 2011 chass Distinguished Alumna.
“Nora has given a good bit of her generous life to the arts, not
only as a remarkable poet and painter but also as a promoter
of the arts in our lives in the Triangle,” says John Balaban,
director of NC State’s creative writing program and the
university’s poet-in-residence.
After nearly being born on campus, Shepard’s involvement
with NC State resumed in the early 1970s, after she gra-duated
from Hollins University in Virginia with a double-major
b.a. in English and American literature and creative
writing (poetry). She occasionally enrolled in a writing or
painting class at NC State while she was also working for
the North Carolina Museum of Art. For most of the 1980s
and 1990s, Shepard spent her time advancing the arts in
the Triangle area — serving as the founding president of the
The way she tells it, Nora Hutton Shepard
was practically born at NC State. Literally.
15
> chass.ncsu.edu
took a few more general courses and put together a thesis, I
could get my mfa degree,” she says.
Shepard graduated with her mfa in 2005. Today she teaches
a poetry course in the college each semester. “I wish I could
teach more than that, but I’m swimming for my life every
semester trying to find things that speak to my students,”
Shepard explains. “I can’t prepare for my class until I get
to know my students and we start building a respectful
community. So it’s different every semester. I want to reach
each student individually. I go to bed thinking about them,
and I wake up thinking about them.”
Shepard’s commitment to — and love for — the college’s
creative writing program are contagious. “For the last
four or five years, I’ve worked behind the scenes to spread
the word that this top-notch mfa program is not down
the road at Duke or UNC-Chapel Hill. It is right here at
NC State. We’re the only ones with this degree. The
capital city of Raleigh is full of world-class ballet, art
museums, symphonies and more — but most people don’t
know about the rich literary community that NC State has
helped to build.”
Read more about our celebrated alumni
at chass.ncsu.edu.
As for a fine arts program being located at a university
primarily known as a science and technology powerhouse,
Shepard says that while no one will argue the strength of
NC State’s technical prowess, “the humanities are the
heartbeat that students crave. We’re about educating
an entire person. If you have the finest minds coming to
study technology, science and engineering, why would you
want to give them anything less than the best all-around
education? NC State is doing that.
“Scientists and poets alike are going to have lives with
hopes and dashed hopes, with dreams and dimmed dreams.
They are going to wonder, ‘How do I feel?’ ‘How do I fit?’
and ‘How does the universe work?’ The arts give us the
beginning vocabularies to answer those questions. And
that’s why they are so vital.”
— Caroline Barnhill
CHASS Distinguished Alumna
Nora Shepard makes time to write,
teach and share her passion for the
college’s creative writing program.
16
CHASS Accolades 2012
Reprinted from the Spring 2012 issue of NC State magazine,
a benefit of membership in the NC State Alumni Association.
to Victims
Voice
Giving
For the past two years, Charmaine Fuller Cooper (mpa ’07)
has helped lead that conversation as executive director of the
North Carolina Justice for Sterilization Victims Foundation,
a newly formed division of the state’s Department of
Administration. The foundation was created in 2010 to help
a separate task force determine how to compensate people
sterilized by order of the North Carolina Eugenics Board in
the middle of the 20th century.
Officials thought welfare costs and crime could be reduced
by preventing reproduction among people deemed unfit to
have children. More than 7,600 men, women and children
were sterilized between 1929 and 1974, and as many as half
of them are believed to still be alive.
In January 2012, the task force recommended that the state
pay each surviving victim $50,000. It will be up to the
North Carolina legislature to approve that funding. To date,
about 75 victims have come forward.
Fuller Cooper has straddled the line between advocate and
bureaucrat, driven by a desire to advance the victims’ cause
It’s a difficult question, with no single
right answer: How much money should the
government pay somebody who had their
right to reproduce taken away by the state?
Charmaine Fuller
Cooper (MPA ’07).
Photo by Ted Richardson
while recognizing that no money has been awarded yet. “It’s
tough when you have somebody call you up and say, ‘My
father signed for my sterilization, and then he raped me and
his friends raped me,’” Fuller Cooper says. “This person was
able somehow to put that history in a pocket ... so they can
survive. And now we’re asking them to open that pocket up,
raggedy seams and all, and tell them we might be able to
provide you with a sewing kit that’s going to mend you. And
then nothing happens. I think that’s dangerous.”
Fuller Cooper grew up in Henderson, n.c., and majored
in political science at North Carolina Central University.
She came to NC State to earn her master’s degree in
public administration in the college’s School of Public and
International Affairs. While enrolled in the program, Fuller
Cooper became executive director of the Carolina Justice
Policy Center, which was instrumental in the 2009 passage
of the North Carolina Racial Justice Act. That act allows
death-row inmates to challenge their death sentences by
using statistics to prove racial bias by prosecutors and jurors.
Fuller Cooper says her graduate degree sharpened her
critical-thinking skills, allowing her to marry her passion for
justice and fairness with a focus on planning and process.
Phoebe Zerwick, a lecturer at Wake Forest University,
served as a member of the task force that developed the
recommendations for compensating victims of the eugenics
program. Zerwick says Fuller Cooper’s ability to work with
both her heart and her head made a huge difference. Shortly
after the task force began work, Fuller Cooper arranged
a day for victims to speak about what they had endured.
That event received national and international coverage and
reminded everybody what their goal was.
“She understood that the victims needed to be heard,”
Zerwick says.
— Ken Otterbourg
17
> chass.ncsu.edu
A group of volunteers travels to a foreign country to provide
aid. But, as so often happens, problems arise. Maybe the
volunteers aren’t a good fit, or their skill levels aren’t sufficient
for the task at hand. Perhaps there’s a clash of cultural values
between those helping and those being helped.
Psychology’s
NC State is leading global progress
in an emerging field of psychology.
emerging
field Such problems can greatly impede progress. Humanitarian
Work Psychology (hwp) is an emerging area of industrial-organizational
psychology specifically designed to address
work-related issues in just such humanitarian arenas.
The NC State University Department of Psychology is
helping lead the global development of the field.
When Associate Professor of Psychology Lori Foster
Thompson (pictured left) taught the world’s first hwp
graduate courses at the universities of Bologna and Barce-lona
in 2010, her students represented a true global
community. “My students came from Peru, Brazil, Africa,
Italy — all over the globe,” says Thompson. “We discussed
how to apply industrial-organizational psychology to
the humanitarian effort. We covered issues like women’s
work opportunities in developing countries, micro-credit
enterprises, online volunteerism and sex slavery.”
Soon after, during the 27th International Congress of
Applied Psychology, a division of the International Associ-ation
of Applied Psychology voted unanimously to establish
a four-year work group devoted to hwp. Thompson is
leading the group.
“People want to see our profession expand in this way,”
says Thompson. “We’ve given talks about hwp around the
world, and we have witnessed a lot of enthusiasm from
members of our field — both senior members and newer
student members.”
Alex Gloss joined NC State’s industrial-organizational
psychology doctoral program last fall and is serving as
coordinator for capacity-building on the global task
force. He’s finding plenty of people who aren’t yet familiar
with hwp.
“It’s industrial-organizational psychology with both a
prosocial edge and a focus on international development,”
he says. “That includes humanitarian aid work, disaster relief
and recovery efforts. hwp is also applied to more general
nongovernment organizations and intergovernmental
organizations that are involved in helping to improve the
well-being of people around the world.”
“We have colleagues who have been doing this independently
for decades,” Thompson adds, “but we didn’t have a common
name or language for it. Now that it’s becoming organized
and strategic, we think it can become a more powerful force
for good.”
— Christa Gala
18
CHASS Accolades 2012
“I was raised with the philosophy of ‘paying it forward’
to help others,” Replogle says. “Whether it was
volunteering in the hospital as an adolescent or serving
on a nonprofit’s board today, service is a major thread
woven throughout my life.”
Replogle, a former speech language pathologist
who specialized in traumatic brain injuries, recently
gave the College of Humanities and Social Sciences
a $25,000 endowment that will support students
minoring in nonprofit studies who are working in an
unpaid internship.
“When I was a student at Miami University in Ohio,
I was given a fellowship that really opened doors
for me that I might not have been able to go through
otherwise,” Replogle says. “I knew that when the
time came, I would want to give back in the area of
education because it is so important to me.”
Replogle began serving on the college’s Institute for
Nonprofits advisory board in 2010. That’s when she
decided to make her gift. “Once I met the students in
the program, I knew this was the perfect place for me
to give back,” she says.
The Institute for Nonprofits enhances the capacity of
nonprofit organizations by connecting the university
with the community. The institute offers a nonprofit
studies minor — one of only a few such undergraduate
programs in the country.
“Our nonprofit studies minor requires an internship,”
says institute director Mary Tschirhart. “Most of the
internships are unpaid, and some students opt for a
local internship so they won��t incur the living expenses
involved with an internship outside our area. Kristin
wanted to enable students to choose an internship
based on their passion for that organization rather
than basing it on the expenses that might be involved.”
A
From the moment she put on a candy
striper’s uniform as a child, Kristin
Replogle knew she would have a passion
for serving her entire life.
caring
Kristin Replogle helps prepare
the next generation of nonprofit
leaders through an endowment
she created in the college’s
Institute for Nonprofits.
pasion
for
19
> chass.ncsu.edu
Replogle’s endowment specifically favors students
who have shown a passion in caring for children.
“When I worked at Massachusetts General
Hospital, I often worked with abused children,”
she recalls. “As I got older and had children of
my own, my passion for caring for children grew
even stronger. And I’ve learned through the years
that your passion will always lead you down the
right path.”
Replogle lives in Raleigh with her husband,
John, ceo of Vermont-based company Seventh
Generation. The couple has four daughters.
Replogle serves on several local nonprofit orga-nizations
that work specifically to protect and
support children: SAFEChild, the Girl Scouts
and KidzNotes, a Durham-based organization
that teaches classical and orchestral music
to underserved children. Farther from home,
President Obama recently appointed Replogle to
the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts
for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Replogle is a big fan of the Institute for Non-profits.
“I think it’s wonderful that NC State has
a nonprofit studies program,” she says. “We need
so badly to prepare nonprofit leaders of the future.
If we can find young folks who have a passion for
service already, it is our obligation to help support
them if we can.”
Taylor Elkins is one of four recipients to date
of a scholarship from the Kristin Gatchel Rep-logle
Nonprofit Internship Fund. Replogle’s gift
allowed Elkins to intern with Outreach360 —
formerly Orphanage Outreach — in the Domini-can
Republic during the summer of 2011.
“The scholarship gave me the amazing opportunity
to stay at an all-boys orphanage in the town of
Jaibon, where I taught English, Spanish literacy
and public health to the boys at the home,”
Elkins says. “I was also able to work with the
local community in weekly summer camps. The
relationships I developed with the boys have had a
huge impact on my life, and that is what I am most
grateful to Kristin for.”
Replogle is grateful to have found students
who share her desire to give back. “Because
I’m so aware of the many needs of nonprofit
organizations, I’m thrilled to find students who
have a passion for giving back,” she says. “It is
very gratifying to give them the support they need
and watch them grow.”
— Caroline Barnhill
The Institute for Nonprofits
by the numbers
105
75
367
4
13,300+
42,000+
70
5
20
NC State students are currently enrolled in
the nonprofit studies minor program.
CHASS majors are minoring in nonprofit studies.
members belong to the Institute’s Community
of Nonprofit Scholars.
students have received the Kristin Replogle
Nonprofit Internship Fund scholarship to date.
people subscribe to the Institute for
Nonprofits’ Philanthropy Journal.
NC State grads hold a minor in nonprofit
studies; most of them are CHASS alums.
or more special reports are published by the
Philanthropy Journal each year, along with at
least 5 webinars.
nonprofit executives have been trained through
the Institute for Nonprofits’ new 2011–12
Achieving Collaborative Capacity for Executive
Success (ACCES) class.
of this country’s 1.5 million nonprofit
organizations are based in North Carolina.
For more information, visit the Institute for Nonprofits at
nonprofit.chass.ncsu.edu.
The Institute for Nonprofits was established in NC State’s
College of Humanities and Social Sciences in 2003.
20
CHASS Accolades 2012
were filled. The congressman wrote her back, however,
encouraging her to apply again. Latta did.
“Fortunately, Congressman Hefner’s office carved out the
stipend from their office budget,” says Latta. “My internship
was everything to me. Without it, I’m not sure I would have
ever realized my dream of working on Capitol Hill. I don’t
know that I would have even had the courage to try.”
Her one-month internship turned into a 14-year job with
Hefner — and a career that has lasted 27 years so far. Over
the years, Latta began to fully appreciate the importance
of her internship. She eventually established an endowment
fund that provides $1,500 each year for a student who has
applied and been accepted to an internship program in
Washington, d.c.
“I came across too many people — both here in Washington
and in North Carolina — who said, ‘Oh, I would have loved
to intern in Washington, but I couldn’t afford to.’ It broke
my heart to hear it,” says Latta.
When Sandra Latta (Political Science ’84) came to
NC State, she was certain she wanted to be an attorney.
She even helped found the Pre-Law Club at NC State.
Deep down, though, there was something else she
really wanted to do.
“I wanted to work on the Hill,” Latta confesses. “But
to me, that sounded analogous to saying I wanted to
go to Hollywood and be discovered.” Today, she serves
at the Pentagon as deputy chief of legislative affairs for
the u.s. Department of the Navy.
You might say politics was in Latta’s genes. Her
mother was the first woman ever elected to public
office in Mocksville, n.c. Her dad, J. Edward Latta
(NC State ’50), was also involved in town politics.
As a junior, Latta wrote to Congressman Bill Hefner
to try to secure an internship, but all intern positions
“For somebody who’s struggling to be in college, to take
a month away to be up here … that’s a tough financial
commitment. I wanted to help take the financial pressure off
a little bit. It also gave me a way to honor my past. It’s my
way of giving back.”
Although it’s the money the recipient needs (and that Latta
provides), the real gift is the chance to follow a dream.
“To me, it’s all about opportunity,” says Latta. “I was given
that opportunity, and there was a lot of luck involved. This
endowment is helping someone else have a little bit of that
luck, a little bit of that magic.”
— Christa Gala
Head
the Hill
An internship on Capitol Hill changed her
life. Alumna Sandra Latta wants to give
current students the same opportunity.
Sandra Latta with Congressman
Bill Hefner as she began her
internship in May 1984 …
… and on the eve of her departure
from the Hill in May 1998.
for
21
> chass.ncsu.edu
Fostering Stability
Children
When a child enters foster care, her whole
world is turned upside down.
Not only does she have new caregivers, a new home and
all-new rules; she also usually leaves her school and starts
over at a new one. All that upheaval can affect how a child
fares in school and her overall chances of academic and
social success.
Researchers in the college’s Center for Family and Community
Engagement (cface) and the Department of Social Work
are determined to help. They are launching Fostering Youth
Educational Success (Fostering yes) with funding from the
u.s. Children’s Bureau.
“The project focuses on educational stability for foster
children,” says Dr. Joan Pennell, professor of social work
and director of cface. “These children often struggle in the
school system as they deal with change and uncertainty in
other parts of their lives.”
Pennell is principal investigator for Fostering yes. Social
services, public schools, the court system, mental health
services and community nonprofit organizations are all
involved with the project.
Pennell and her team are working with groups in Cumberland
County, home to both Fort Bragg and Pope Army Air Field.
Nearly one-third of students in the school system are part
of military-connected families. These families can be subject
to high stress, particularly during times of deployment,
according to Pennell. In some instances, all of a family’s
caregivers are deployed simultaneously.
“School stability is particularly important for this area,”
Pennell says. “We’re also looking at ways to overcome
administrative delays in admitting children to a new school
when they enter foster care.”
“Ideally, children can stay in their same school to minimize
disruption,” says Dr. Jodi Hall, a clinical assistant professor
of social work at NC State and co-principal investigator
on the project. “But if they need to move to a new school,
important information needs to travel with them so their
new teachers have information that could contribute to their
academic and social success.”
Pennell hopes to increase the use of child and family teams
to enhance children’s chances for success. The teams include
youth and their families, teachers, social workers, pastors and
other community members who work together to develop a
plan to help children succeed in school and in the community.
The Fostering yes team’s research will inform the develop-ment
of new policies and procedures to support a stable
system for foster children. “We want to create a blueprint
that can be used throughout North Carolina and nationally,”
Pennell says.
Hear Dr. Pennell interviewed on WUNC radio
about Fostering YES:
wunc.org/programs/news/archive/TJP102511.mp3/view
for
— Christa Gala
22
CHASS Accolades 2012
For the past two summers, future Army officers at NC State
University have put in those hours of study to give themselves
an advantage in the field. And with funding from the
Department of Defense, Special Forces soldiers from Fort
Bragg will soon join them.
Teaching future military leaders
In 2009, the chass Department of Foreign Languages and
Literatures received a three-year, $800,000 Project go
grant to improve cultural and linguistic proficiency of
rotc students in five critical languages: Arabic,
Chinese, Persian, Russian and Urdu. That grant
launched Project gold, a summer intensive program
that provides two semesters of foreign language
instruction in just six weeks. rotc students receive
scholarships covering tuition in the language courses
or for a study-abroad program in India, China, Egypt
or Russia.
Language proficiency among rotc cadets is a high
priority for the u.s. Army, according to Capt. Joseph
Cofiori, assistant military science professor and a
member of the Army rotc cadre at NC State. “It’s a
force multiplier,” he says, “a skill that vastly increases
a soldier’s potential.”
“We don’t operate stateside,” Cofiori says. “We work
in places where people don’t speak English as their
primary language. It enhances the mission when
you can communicate with the locals in a language
they understand.”
“I think it’s crucial for us to send people who know not
just the languages but the culture of the places they��re
going,” says Dr. Inas Messiha, who teaches Arabic
the Talk
Ten hours a day studying a foreign language?
That’s daunting.
But it’s far less daunting than navigating
a foreign country as a member of the
military when you don’t have the ability to
communicate with local residents.
and soldiers Talk
Helping
students
23
> chass.ncsu.edu
The college’s Critical Languages Program offers
elementary, intermediate and advanced intensive
courses in:
• Arabic: one of the oldest languages in the world,
which today is spoken by more than 256 million people
in about 30 different countries, the most after English
and French.
• Chinese (Mandarin): one of the six official languages
of the United Nations, spoken by more than one billion
people around the world.
• Russian: spoken in Russia and the former Soviet
republics; it is the key language across the Caucasus
and Central Asia and one of the official languages of
the United Nations.
• Persian: the primary language spoken in Iran and one
of the official languages of Afghanistan.
• Pashto: the other official language of Afghanistan.
• Urdu: the language of Pakistan.
The pace is intense because students are covering
two semesters of material in just six weeks. Every day
they spend six hours in the classroom, after which
they have up to four hours of homework. The first three
hours each day focus more on the structural aspects of
the language. The second three hours of class focus on
developing communication skills in situations infused
with real culture. Afternoon activities include situational
role-playing; film clips; hands-on demos of music,
cooking and calligraphy; lab work and guest speakers.
The immersive approach worked for Zack Boyd, a cadet
studying political science at NC State. Boyd went to
China last summer as part of Project GO. “I remember
being in the middle of Shanghai, one of the largest
cities in the world. I was completely lost,” says Boyd, a
junior from Fayetteville. “I used the material we learned
in class to guide the taxi driver to our hotel.”
The utility of foreign language competency can prove
to be much more critical for a soldier or a diplomat.
Through its new collaboration with Fort Bragg,
NC State’s Language Training Center is changing
the way foreign languages and cultures are taught,
improving the linguistic and cultural literacy of our
future leaders.
Imm ersion Learning
at NC State. “The difference between how you say a
word correctly and incorrectly is sometimes literally
the difference between life and death.”
Teaching Special Forces soldiers
Project go proved to be highly successful and led
to a one-year, $1.8 million pilot grant from the
National Security Education Program to teach critical
languages to Special Forces soldiers. “We are using
the same immersive, functional, communicative
approach that we used with our rotc students
in Project go,” says Dr. Dwight Stephens, director of
NC State’s new Language Training Center. “It’s just
that now we’re teaching not only university students
but also soldiers at the John F. Kennedy Special
Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg.”
The grant promotes teacher training too, and the
Language Training Center at NC State produces up
to 10 workshops in second-language acquisition and
instruction techniques for the six critical languages.
In winter and spring, NC State will provide intensive
language courses on base at Fort Bragg. During the
summer, active-duty soldiers will come to NC State to
join rotc students and regular university students from
all over the country for courses in all the languages.
“The rotc students will definitely benefit from taking
classes alongside members of the military who have
been in some unusual places doing some extraordinary
things,” says Dr. Ruth Gross, professor of German
and head of the Department of Foreign Languages
and Literatures. Gross is also principal investigator for
the project.
The partnership between NC State and the Special
Warfare Center and School is part of a larger effort
involving the University of North Carolina system
and the military. It marks an evolution in cooperation
between the military and higher education, according
to Stephens.
“The historical separation of the public academic
institutions and the military is dissolving,” he says.
“We are realizing there is a lot to share and a lot to
learn from each other.”
“The difference between how you say a word correctly
and incorrectly is sometimes literally the difference
between life and death.”
24
CHASS Accolades 2012
While Badger was stationed at Fort Bragg, he completed the
Special Forces Qualification Course. He also found time
to read the work of John Kessel, a professor in NC State’s
creative writing program and author of many popular
science-fiction novels and stories. Badger had always been
a fan of science fiction and fantasy, which led him to Kessel.
“While I was still at Bragg and before leaving for Afghanistan,
I traveled to NC State just to meet John Kessel,” Badger
recalls. “We had a really great conversation.”
Kessel, the director of Creative Writing at the time, was also
teaching undergraduate and graduate classes. “He made a
lot of time for me, and we talked about writing,” Badger
says. “He invited me to write him when I was overseas, and
I did. He encouraged me from there to consider applying to
the mfa program.”
While he was still in Afghanistan, Badger learned he’d
been accepted to the mfa program. “I’ve always enjoyed
writing, but I didn’t know how formal my writing training
would be or should be. The military, obviously, is a much
different place. I don’t know how seriously I was considering
formal study.”
Badger came home from Afghanistan in July 2009 and
started the mfa program soon after. Toward the end of his
first semester, Badger paid a visit to Wilton Barnhardt, a
professor who had studied at Oxford and was then the mfa
program director.
“I told Wilton I’d be interested in studying at Oxford,” says
Badger. “He didn’t laugh me out of his office, as he maybe
should have. He asked me what I proposed to study there. I
said, ‘Well, I’m still feeling that out.’
“Wilton said, ‘Find something you’re passionate about doing
and come over to England with me in the summer when I’m
leading the Oxford Study Abroad program. I’ll introduce
you to some folks. We’ll do what we can to make it happen.’
From the moment I walked in his office, he took me absolutely
seriously as a writer.”
As a kid, Will Badger, MFA ’11, wanted to
be a writer so he could explore all the places
in his head he was sure he’d never see in
person. Ironically, now he’s doing both.
Soldier
Oxford turns
Scholar
Will Badger in Paktya
Province, Afghanistan.
Sometimes you have to make a tough choice: a Fulbright
scholarship? Or Oxford University in England?
It was a good problem to have for Will Badger, a 2011
graduate of NC State’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative
Writing program. After all, just two years prior, Badger was
serving in Afghanistan as a Green Beret medic, dodging
death every day.
In the end, Badger chose Oxford. But first, how did he end
up at NC State at all?
After taking an honors undergraduate degree from Brigham
Young University, Badger enlisted in the military for a variety
of reasons.
“I had a desire to serve, although I wasn’t a big fan of the
Iraq war,” says Badger, 33. “I thought I needed to experience
it for myself and do my part for the country before I could
speak in a committed way about the rightness or wrongness
of various enterprises.” The adventure, camaraderie and
maybe even a little old-fashioned romanticism appealed to
him as well.
25
> chass.ncsu.edu
“The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a
stranger. The second time … an honored guest. The
third time … you become family.”
— from Three Cups of Tea, by G. Mortensen and D. Oliver
Three cups of tea
they taught us (waving the book about)
a new way to win the war
With the first cup
fathers elbowed children into razor wire
to grab the Pokemon backpacks passed out like party favors,
the chai sweet and steeped
with sugar that looked like quartz
During the second cup
cricket teams from as far as Parachinar
came for the Chamkani Games
but some chai slopped over the chipped lip of my cup
soaking my shirt when
riots broke out before
conversation
did
As the spinach-like dregs of the last cup
tickled my lips
a grandfather — actually my host — stole a radio
it was hard to watch them beat him
how he bleated
The cups come from a Balti proverb, anyway.
Maybe their mountains are nice
this time of year.
— Will Badger
Afghani Chai
A few months later, Badger ended up in John Balaban’s
poetry class. Balaban, who had become the next
mfa director, had been a conscientious objector to
the Vietnam War, working for the Committee of
Responsibility in Vietnam. As alternative service,
Balaban treated war-injured children and evacuated
them to the United States when necessary.
It was an interesting dynamic: the soldier and the
conscientious objector.
Will Badger at the
Shakespeare Institute,
Stratford-upon-Avon.
“The Vietnam War caused any number of chasms in our society
in the ’60s and ’70s,” says Badger. “He [Balaban] felt strongly
against our involvement in Vietnam, and his beliefs took him
there. I was really impressed with him as a person and as a writer,
because here was someone who felt strongly enough to involve
himself personally. I wasn’t sure how he would relate to a recent
war vet, but he went out of his way to make sure I felt comfortable.”
It was in Balaban’s class that Badger finally wrote about his war
experiences, in a poem called “Afghani Chai.” (See sidebar.)
Balaban sent the poem to the international literary journal War,
Literature and the Arts, which published it (volume 22, 2010).
Next, Badger applied for a Fulbright scholarship to translate Polish
author Janusz Zajdel’s novel Limes inferior into English. With
Barnhardt’s help, he also applied to Oxford. He never dreamed
that both Fulbright and Oxford would come calling.
In the end, his choice revolved around logistics and family.
He headed to Oxford with his wife and children to study witch-craft
in Shakespeare and the supernatural in the early modern
period. He’ll be there for several years, first earning his Master
of Studies before moving on to a Doctor of Philosophy. And even
though he declined the Fulbright, Badger still plans to translate
the Zajdel novel.
“He’s a good writer, and he’s probably going to be a brilliant
scholar,” says Balaban. “Everything he does is done perfectly
well. I guess the surprise to all of us is that he came to us from
a battlefield as a medic in Afghanistan. Somehow, that almost
seems irrelevant now.”
— Christa Gala
26
CHASS Accolades 2012
Daniel C. Gunter iii (History and Spanish Language and
Literature ’00) was named the university’s Outstanding
Young Alumnus. Gunter (pictured above), an associate with
dl a Piper, has served two terms on the chass Advisory
Board. He is on the Alumni Association Board of Directors
and the Lonnie Poole Golf Course Campaign Committee.
A lifetime member of the university’s Alumni Association, he
hosts “DENers with the Pack” to support current students.
As an alumnus of Sigma Nu Fraternity, he works with
University Development on fundraising for the fraternity
and has served on the Redevelopment of Greek Court Task
Force. As a member of the Leonidas Lafayette Polk Society,
Gunter provides support to chass, the Alumni Association
and the University Scholars program, among other areas of
the university.
“So many people at NC State — professors, administrators,
classmates and others — have enriched my life academically,
professionally and personally,” Gunter says. “Since I could
never pay back all that I’ve gotten from NC State, it made
the most sense to me to pass it on to the next generation of
students and to give my time to the university however I can.”
“David, Celia and Daniel are three tireless ambassadors for
NC State University and the College of Humanities and
Social Sciences,” says Dean Jeff Braden. “I am proud to see
their contributions recognized among those who make this
university great.”
David S. Jolley (Economics, ’70) and his wife Celia G. Jolley
(Education, ’83) received the Meritorious Service Award
for their outstanding contributions to the university. David,
a chass alumnus, was a founding member of NC State’s
Board of Visitors. He has served on boards including the
NC State University Foundation, the NC State University
Endowment Board and the Achieve! Campaign Steering Com-mittee.
He currently serves on the chass Advisory Board.
David is vice president of commercial lending at c&f Bank
in Williamsburg, Va. A retired educator, Celia has been
active with the College of Education’s Campaign Steering
Committee, Advisory Board and Leadership Board, among
other endeavors.
The Jolleys (both pictured below) are members of the
C.W. Dabney Lifetime Giving Society and the R. S. Pullen
Society. Their generosity has touched numerous programs
across the university.
“We try to stay tuned to the needs of students,” David says.
“Celia and I owe a lot of our success to NC State. We’ve
been well served by higher education, so being involved is a
critically important part of what we do.”
alums
recognized
Alumni from the college were
recently honored by the NC State
Alumni Association at its Evening
of Stars gala that recognizes
those who have made a difference
in their communities and given
back to their alma mater.
— Caroline Barnhill
for service
27
> chass.ncsu.edu
Transformational
Traditions
While co-chair of the
Commission on Traditions,
2012–2013 Student Body
President Andy Walsh
helped reintroduce
Tuffy, the living mascot,
to athletic events.
ncsu.edu
Learn more at
NC State: For 125 years, transforming students into leaders.
“Our traditions and our history are what bind us together,” says Andy
Walsh, Political Science, class of ‘13. “I honor the great traditions of this
campus, and I want to help create traditions for the generations to come.”
Now Andy, a fi rst-generation college student, is spearheading a major
fundraising effort: raising $200,000 for the Coaches’ Corner just outside
Reynolds Coliseum. If Andy succeeds, busts of Everett Case, Norm Sloan
and Jim Valvano will be unveiled in 2013, next to the existing tribute to
Kay Yow.
28
CHASS Accolades 2012
Janet Nguyen (International Studies, ’14)
is working to establish NC State’s first
Asian sorority.
“I want to help student leaders of our generation grow
into the world leaders of tomorrow,” says Nguyen.
“We’re not just going to be a sisterhood — we’re going
to help these young women build skills for the future.”
Asian interest sororities are relatively new in the South.
Only a handful are active on campuses in the UNC
system. Read more about this transformational young
leader at chass.ncsu.edu.
Sisterhood
Creating
College of Humanities & Social Sciences
Campus Box 8101
Raleigh, NC 27695-8101